What we catalogue

Individual events and materials

TeSS is a one-stop shop for trainers and trainees to discover online information and content. These individual items are registered as Events or Materials in TeSS.

Events

Events in TeSS are defined as face-to-face or online training opportunities that have set start and end times. These primarily take the form of workshops, courses, webinars, etc.; but TeSS also collects information about conferences, meetings and hackathons, as these may also provide opportunities for learning.

Materials

Materials in TeSS are defined as training resources that can be accessed at any time. These may be in a variety of different formats, including online tutorials, videos, PowerPoint presentations, and so on.

TeSS collects event information from over 100 content providers, supplementing the Event data with geolocation information found using Nominatim.

Training workflows

New to TeSS are graphical training tools termed ‘Training Workflows’. Three main types of workflow are in development: Educational Resources, Learning Pathways and Concept Maps. These encapsulate different types of, and/or approaches to, training, at different levels of granularity, within easy-to-use visual displays.

Learning paths

In order to advance their skills, trainees need to embark on a path, or developmental trajectory. To facilitate this journey, learning paths aim to structure, within simple visual workflows, the set of relevant training resources that trainees need to study in order to accomplish their learning objectives. Learning paths are being developed by ELIXIR TeSS, ELIXIR-NL and ELIXIR UK.

Educational resource

In this type of workflow, trainees are introduced to various practical tasks, linked to associated online tools and/or databases, within self-contained modules. Each module includes i) succinct statements of teaching goals and learning outcomes, to convey to trainees what they will be able to do on completion of the module; ii) a series of questions or ‘Reflections’ to provoke critical thinking about the tasks that have been completed; iii) additional background information and further reading to help support learning and enquiry; and iv) multiple choice quiz questions to evaluate understanding at the end. Educational Resources for introductory sequence and structural bioinformatics are currently being developed by ELIXIR TeSS, ELIXIR-UK and the UK Structural Bioinformatics group (via the FunPDBe project).