Task 6.4 of SSHOC Work Package 6 concerns the building of expertise within the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) training community. One of the key outcomes of this task and the milestone described in this report is the SSH Training Discovery Toolkit (TDT). The TDT was developed to aid trainers in the SSH enabling them to discover materials that they can utilise in their own training activities.

The aim of T6.5 activities was to provide targeted training events to the SSH community in the form of workshops and webinars. The aim of the events was to maximize the uptake of SSHOC resources and to promote data-driven and cross-disciplinary research directions. Targeted training webinars aimed to complement training workshops. This report concerns training webinars which were conceived as thematically narrower and shorter online events that would precede or follow the workshops, while the workshops were conceptualized as comprehensive and immersive training sessions.

The report covers the organisation, delivery, content, and lessons learned from the SSHOC Final Conference, titled “Advancing SSH Research with SSHOCingly good and sustainable resources”. The hybrid conference took place at Bluepoint premises in Brussels, Belgium, on 6 and 7 April 2022.

Task 6.2 and WP2 lead the organisation of the conference with the support of the project partners in the organising and programme committees.

The awareness-raising webinars were part of the community engaging activities of task 6.2 Fostering Communities: Engaging New & Existing Users. The goal was to inform the community about the development of SSHOC services and tools, consult with the community members, and showcase practical use cases. Webinars were organised in close cooperation with other work packages within the SSHOC project.

Overall, ten awareness webinars took place:

1. Discussion meeting about requirements of CESSDA Service Providers for a Dataverse repository

Targeted training events aimed to empower data users, data producers and data experts through skills and knowledge transfer to maximize the uptake of SSHOC resources and to promote data-driven and cross-disciplinary research directions. This goal was achieved through the organisation of twenty training workshops and webinars which were conceptualized as complementary training events.

The goal of task 6.3 “Empowering Users: Training Materials and Online Learning Paths” was primarily to provide an overview and to collect existing training materials in the area of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), as well as to support the creation of training materials within the SSHOC project. The task of inventorising was summarized in a previous deliverable D6.7 Inventory of training materials1.

The awareness raising workshops were part of the SSHOC stakeholder engagement and awareness raising activities, aimed towards fostering communities in the Social Sciences and Humanities. The aim of the workshops was to raise awareness on SSHOC services and tools in development, gather feedback from various participants (e.g., data producers, data users, data experts, researchers, research librarians, secure data facility professionals, policy makers and civil society), and to inform project work based on the received feedback.

The SSH Training Community is an important part of the engagement and training activities in the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud (SSHOC) project. The concerted efforts of the SSHOC Task 6.4 lead to the development of the SSH Training Community which is a compilation of formats and tools that foster community building and engagement, mutual learning, and networking among stakeholders involved in training activities related to the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH).

Training is an important aspect of knowledge acquisition and transfer in the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud project (SSHOC). For successful implementation and promotion of the SSH Open Cloud, it is crucial to empower users, and to facilitate mutual learning and networking among data producers, users, and experts. Therefore, the SSHOC Training Community has been established.

The SSHOC stakeholder series aimed to showcase the progress and achievements of the projects and engage with a wider range of SSHOC stakeholders and other European initiatives; to promote the uptake of SSHOC tools, services, and shared data, equip producers, users, and experts with relevant skills and capabilities, and support the collaboration with other initiatives. The events in the series were designed to be cross-stakeholder to maximise the outreach and to foster the dialog and collaboration between SSHOC stakeholders.