Mapping and evaluating dRTP’s contributions to computing skills’pedagogies

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 17:39:53 +0000

On the 29th of June, we will be giving a lightning talk and a poster presentation at STEP-UP London Conference 2026, the 7th regional community conference for digital Research Technical Professionals (dRTPs) in London and the South East, supported by STEP-UP, a UK-based research project funded under the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)’s 2023 Strategic Technical Platforms call.

Abstract:

Our research – funded by the UKRI’s DisCouRSE+ network - seeks to map and analyse the provision of digital research competencies (DRC) which are led by or involve dRTP’s across Higher Education institutions in the UK. The teaching of computational methods has spread across disciplines, spawning numerous pedagogical approaches and a wide variety of methods, software, products, and environments. However, the role of dRTP’s in the proliferation teaching DRC remains unclear. dRTP’s responsibilities are primarily focused on research and infrastructure and expectations around involvement in training and teaching vary widely across the sector. Furthermore, choices as to which approaches and delivery modes to adopt in teaching and training are often driven by trends, licensing constraints or trainer’s familiarity rather than pedagogical criteria or context suitability.

Our research, therefore, seeks to investigate what training and teaching is being delivered by dRTP’s? What skills and competencies are being taught? What pedagogical approaches are being taken? How does thisdiffer across audiences, infrastructures, and institutions? We will use this lightning talk (and the poster we are also proposing) to report on our preliminary findings from a survey we have been running and audit of curricula and training involving dRTP’s listed on university websites and to further develop conversations with the dRTP community over their involvement in education and training.

Slides

See

Maps, world-views and neutrality: squaring the circle?

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Map-making is a serious business. There’s a science devoted to that, and only highly specialised companies and organisations can endeavour to translate every feature on Earth into a feature on a map with the right size and location. But that’s what make maps reliable, too. So much so that, besides being part of our everyday lives, scientists use them to assess the effects of drought and deforestation, identify migration patterns or making predictions, amongst others. And yet, all maps are wrong. All of them make assumptions on how the world is or should be, and in so doing, maps have particular built-in world views and become political. They define what is included and what is not, what can and can’t be done with them, and the stories that they convey. In other words: maps shape the world as much as they are shaped by them. In this talk, we will explain how maps are made to understand how they have been used to exert power and how they are still doing so. We will then focus on OpenStreetMap, a collective effort to “map the world as it is”, and how are they succeeding or failing in doing so in an equitable way.

Timothy Monteath |

Mapping and evaluating dRTP’s contributions to computing skills’pedagogies

Abstract:

Slides

Maps, world-views and neutrality: squaring the circle?