BLOG | Why and how to share your training materials

16 July 2025

In this blog post, DANS colleagues Deborah Thorpe and Michelle van den Berk share their experiences of developing training materials on ‘hard-to-share data’ in the social sciences and humanities. They explain why reusing such materials is so important – and how you can make use of them yourself.

We want you to reuse our training materials on ‘Hard-to-Share Data in the Social Sciences and Humanities’!

By Deborah Thorpe and Michelle van den Berk

Designing, organising, and evaluating training is time-consuming and requires specialist skills and knowledge. Therefore, if there are existing training materials (such as lesson plans and slides) on your chosen topic, it makes sense to reuse, adapt, and build on these rather than creating new ones from scratch. However, even in the world of open science, where we emphasise to researchers the importance of data sharing and reuse, there has been a tendency to undervalue the importance of sharing our training materials. As a result, trainers might develop new materials each time, rather than benefiting from the shared experiences and efforts of others.

At the beginning of 2025, we embarked on a new project to design four workshops on different aspects of sharing sensitive or ‘hard to share’ data in the social sciences and humanities ranging from an introduction to the topic of ‘hard to share data’, to sharing field notes in different disciplines to the CARE principles. As part of these workshops, we incorporated the experiences of researchers through a series of valuable case studies, demonstrating how they have approached data sharing where ethical, commercial, or logistical constraints make this challenging.

The project team made the decision to spend time creating training materials that not only provide a valuable and enjoyable training experience, but are also useful and easy to reuse. In the early stage of the project, when writing the DMP, we discussed which different types of material should be included in our sharing efforts. We wanted to select reusable training materials for preservation and sharing via Zenodo – not only slide decks, but also session plans, and group exercise instructions.

Training workshops held in The Hague, Leiden and Utrecht

The project kicked off in March with an introductory workshop on ‘Hard to Share Data in the social sciences and humanities and using SANE’. At this highly-interactive session at the DANS offices, we explored the concept of ‘hard-to-share data’ in these disciplines, and heard about case studies of different types of hard-to-share data. We also had an introduction and hands-on demonstration of the Secure ANalysis Environment (SANE).

Workshop participants listen attentively to the case studies presented in our first workshop: ‘Hard to Share Data in the Social Sciences and Humanities and using SANE’.

In our second workshop of the series, in early May, we were at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague for a training session on ‘The Ethics of Sharing Fieldwork Data and the CARE Principles’. The CARE Principles are a framework for the governance of data collected in indigenous communities worldwide. In this training, participants learned more about CARE and how the Ethics processes at Dutch universities facilitate its implementation. A notable element of this workshop was a ‘researcher storytelling session’ that was facilitated by Beatrice Hati, PhD candidate at ISS.

A selection of the ‘Beyond Personal Data’ team celebrate the completion of the ‘The Ethics of Sharing Fieldwork Data and the CARE Principles’ workshop, held on 8 May in The Hague.

For the third workshop later in May, Leiden University hosted a workshop on ‘Sharing Field Notes’. Researchers and data professionals gathered together to dive into the reasons why field notes are often not shared, and the pros and cons of sharing fieldwork data, and how to share them. One of the speakers was Anna Roodhof from Wageningen University, who also shared her thoughts on the workshop in this blogpost, https://ruralsociologywageningen.nl/2025/05/27/blog-workshop-sharing-field-notes/. As with the first two workshops, participants heard about case studies from different disciplines and had plenty of time to discuss best practices around sharing fieldwork data in small groups.

Pascal Flohr presents a case study during the training workshop on ‘Sharing Field Notes’.

Finally, the materials from these three workshops were synthesised into a dedicated, and more advanced workshop on ‘Hard to Share Data’, aimed at data professionals as part of the DCC Spring Training Days series, held in Utrecht in June.

Training materials shared in Zenodo

The project team created detailed session plans for each workshop, as well as slide decks for the various presentations, and the plans for all of our group exercises. Even though the workshops were attended by, in total, 95 researchers and data professionals, it was not possible for everyone who was interested in the topics to attend these one-off in-person sessions.

So, having put considerable effort into creating these innovative training materials, the project team deemed that it was important to share them more widely, making them available for reuse by other trainers in the future. To draw your attention to these, and to invite you to reuse them under their CC-BY licence, we have provided links to them in Zenodo below:

Introductory workshop on ‘Hard to Share Data in the Social Sciences and Humanities and using the Secure Analysis Environment’:
Thorpe, D. E., van den Berk, M., Flohr, P., van der Meer, L., Hesam, A., Campbell, R., & Oberheim, F. (2025, May 6). Workshop on Hard to Share Data in the Social Sciences and Humanities and using the Secure ANalysis Environment (SANE). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15302953

Workshop on ‘The Ethics of Sharing Fieldwork Data and the CARE Principles’:
Lushaj, B., Gelens, T., Magraw, J.-Y., Mos, A., Baloum, R.-C., & Hati Gitundu, . (Beatrice) B. (2025, June 10). Workshop on The Ethics of Sharing Fieldwork Data and the CARE Principles. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15629394

Workshop on ‘Sharing Field Notes’:
Flohr, P., van den Berk, M., Roodhof, A., Verheijen, J., Bruil, M., & Thorpe, D. E. (2025, July 1). Workshop – Sharing Field Notes. Sharing Field Notes workshop, Leiden University. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15600311

Synthesis workshop ‘Hard to Share Data’ (DCC Spring Training Days series):
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15738645

Funding acknowledgement

The project ‘Beyond personal data: a new initiative to support early-career researchers with hard-to-share data’ is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) via the Thematic Digital Competence Centre Social Sciences & Humanities (TDCC-SSH). The project team is grateful for this support, which has allowed them to develop these resources. You can find out more about the project as a whole here.