LUSTRE: An Online Data Management and Student Project Resource

Abstract

We advocate for greater emphasis in training students about data management, within the context of supporting experience in reproducible workflows. We introduce the Lancaster University STatistics REsources (LUSTRE) package, used to manage student research project data in psychology and build capacity with respect to data acumen. LUSTRE provides a safe space to engage students with open research practices—by making tangible different phases of the reproducible research pipeline, while emphasizing its value as a transferable skill. It is an open-source online data catalogue that captures key data management information about a student research project of potential relevance to data scientists. Embedded within a taught programme, it also highlights concepts and examples of data management processes. We document a portfolio of open teaching resources for LUSTRE, and consider how others can implement or adapt them to facilitate data management and open research. We discuss the role of LUSTRE as a; (a) resource and set of activities for promoting good data management practices; (b) framework to enable the delivery of key concepts in open research; (c) an online system to organize and showcase project work.

Keywords:

• Data science
• Education
• Open science
• Public data sharing
• Statistical literacy
• Teacher preparation
• Transparency

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Lancaster University Faculty of Science & Technology for a Teaching Development Grant that facilitated the implementation of this LUSTRE project. We also acknowledge CETL (Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning) for an award relating to a previous version of the project involving also Dennis Hay and Andrea Towse, and to Rob Thompson for software programming on that initial (LUPSY) project.