Scientific Collaboration & Education Theme Team

Neuroscience Community of Interest

Theme Team Background

Initial Project Proposal

Key Resources

Team Members

Agendas and Minutes

2026-02-19

2026-01-15 - Breakout during neuroscience community meeting

2025-12-18

2025-11-20

2025-09-18

2025-06-26

2025-04-17

Finalizing White Paper Outline: 2025-01-21

Kick-off Meeting: 2024-12-02

Theme Team Background

The Scientific Collaboration and Education Theme Team aims to bridge gaps in neuroscience education by focusing on the practical skills and collaborative approaches needed for multi-modal neural data analysis. This team’s work will support both recruiting and professional development while advancing access to important educational resources. By identifying, addressing, and developing solutions for these educational gaps, we aim to enhance the capacity for scientific collaboration across diverse communities.

Initial Project Proposal

Our objective is to create a comprehensive whitepaper that outlines best practices for building educational resources tailored to large-scale brain data tools. This whitepaper will include guidelines on how to prepare both students and instructors, ensuring educators have the tools they need to confidently teach and apply data analysis methods. Key project components include:

• Training for Trainers: Resources that equip instructors with skills to teach students using current neuroscience data analysis tools effectively.
• Localization and Accessibility: Strategies for expanding the reach of resources to non-English speakers, exploring lightweight and sustainable methods for localization.
• Applied Examples: Where feasible, an application of these guidelines to specific tools lacking robust educational resources, providing a model for other educational efforts.

Proposed Project Summary

Our proposed whitepaper will serve as a practical guide for creating and sharing teaching resources that meet the high standards of modern educational practices. The whitepaper will:

• Present best practices for developing, localizing, and disseminating neuroscience training resources.
• Provide a framework for preparing “train-the-trainer” modules to expand teaching capacity.
• Demonstrate low-cost localization techniques to make resources more inclusive.

Dissemination and Community Engagement

The team is committed to making this resource as accessible and impactful as possible. We plan to leverage institutional resources, online platforms such as YouTube, GitHub, OSF, and Zenodo, and will present findings and tools at conferences and talks to ensure wide reach and adoption. A white paper + high-level summary  (e.g. COBIDAS | Organization for Human Brain Mapping) approach will be employed to make this effort more public facing.

Key Resources

Team Members

Agendas and Minutes

2026-06-18

Attendees: Mathew Abrams, Jack Van Horn, Kelly Shen, Saskia de Vries, William Grisham, Suyee Lee, Ramona, Kaitlyn

Recording

Passcode: u$832DL0

Agenda: Continue discussion on Neuro-AI Chasm webinar series

• Goal: Members of the group to take ownership of a webinar and find speakers, determine the objective, and activities that will take place

Proposal:

1. Bridging the Neuro-AI Chasm

• Purpose: Introduce the framework and establish why the current neuroscience
• training paradigm needs to evolve
• Format: Lecture, Panel discussion, Q&A
• Learning outcomes: TBD

2. Productive Struggle in Brain Data Science Training (Principle 1)

• Topics: TBD
• Format: TBD
• Deliverables: TBD

3. Designing for Global and Local Contexts (Principle 2)

• Topics:

• Resource inequities
• HPC vs local computing
• Accessibility challenges
• Inclusive training design

• Format: panel (representatives from Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia)
• Deliverables: TBD

4. Adaptive Learning Pathways for Neuroscience (Principle 3)

• Topics:

• Novice vs expert learners
• Scaffolding
• AI-assisted tutoring
• Branching educational pathways

• Format: Presentations from different infrastructures (TBD)
• Deliverables: (TBD)

5. Teaching Metacognition in the Age of AI (Principle 4)

• Topics:

• Illusion of competence
• Reflection checkpoints
• AI hallucinations
• Scientific skepticism

• Format: Activity + Panel
• Learning objectives (TBD)

6. AI as a collaborator, not an oracle (Principle 5)

• Topics:

• Collaborative cognition
• Human-AI teams
• AI as a provocateur
• Structured scientific debate

• Format: TBD
• Deliverables/Learning objectives (TBD)

7. From Framework to practice

• Topics:

• Applying the framework to existing resources
• Case study (TBD)
• Alignment with FAIR and training standards
• Building communities of practice

• Format: Participants redesign the use case training using the 5 principles
• Deliverable: An example of a training resources that applies the 5 principles

Timeline: Start in September 2026, ends in May 2027

Summary

• Mathew discussed plans for developing the  webinar series that targets educators. He hopes to make it interactive rather than purely informational.
• The  series will be promoted by the Neurotech EU Alliance and undergraduate neuroscience faculties such as that of the Karolinska Institutet. Promotion can even be done via the Neurostars platform
• Mathew suggested having panel discussions with individuals from different regions in order to address global and local context, resource inequality, and high performance computing (HPC) versus  local computing. The goal is to make neuroscience education and neuroinformatics more equitable and beneficial to low--resource countries.
• The group suggested having  certificates for participants who attend 75% or more of the webinars
• The group explored forming a committee to refine the program and identify speakers; invitations, recordings, editing, and outreach can be done by Kaitlyn, Ramona and Mathew.

Actions

• All - review the webinar series proposal and provide feedback, including suggestions for speakers/format before next meeting (September)
• All - consider if any of the webinars should be more hands-on or interactive; Provide suggestions for alternative formats

2026-05-21

Attendees: Ramona, Kaitlyn, Mathew, Milagros, Jack, Kim, Saskia

Recording

Passcode: T+0LYUcB

Agenda:

1. Approval of the agenda
2. Updates from members
3. Activities:

1. Ideas from 2026-03-19 meeting minutes
2. New idea:

1. Webinar series on AI Literacy for Neuroscience Educators (leverage AI-paper) Bridging the Neuro-AI Chasm_v1.docx

Actions:

• Community to review the AI paper and:

1. Identify challenges/topics to focus on

• Ethical Issues with AI use (Kim)
• How to prepare data for AI use (Kim)
• …

2. Identify speakers who could speak to these topics

• Mathew  → Johannes Vorwerk
• …
• …

• All - Consider alternative strategies for community engagement beyond webinars
• Ramona/Kaitlyn - Circulate plan for TT via email
• All - Provide feedback on plan and/or share any objections with leads
• Ramona/Kaitlyn - Coordinate outreach and organize webinars

Meeting Summary

The meeting focused on developing a webinar series to address the implementation and application of AI tools in educational settings, moving beyond previously published guidelines. The group hopes to use the webinars to address inconsistent institutional AI policies and to help prepare educators to teach students critical thinking, validation of AI outputs, interpretation of results, and scientific intuition. The team plans to explore use-cases in order to identify specific topics for webinars and connect with experts from organisations such as BRIDGE or the Allen Institute to identify speakers who can speak to these issues. The group discussed how developing a webinar series may help identify other challenges the community is facing and provide inspiration for other resources that can be disseminated in parallel (e.g., discussion forums, faculty development programs, social media etc.)

AI implementation in Universities

• Integration of AI in neuroscience differs across universities.  Institutions have individual philosophies and inconsistent policies on tools like OpenAI and ChatGPT.  
• Private universities often allow unrestricted AI use; Public and European institutions tend to create their own AI systems that become outdated before they are even launched and see low adoption.
• Administrators are key stakeholders who need education on AI, especially in European university alliances requiring system interoperability across different regions. However, they often drive restrictive policies from a place of ignorance.
• Instructors would include traditional classroom teachers as well as professors, research staff and laboratory staff amongst others.
• Instructors feel unprepared to manage AI-assisted student work. Participants agreed that they all face similar challenges like students using AI tools without fully understanding what they have produced or how to evaluate students when they already have the tools to find the answers.
• A webinar series is a living, evolving resource; This, in contrast to a manuscript, which is static and may not even be relevant in a few years as AI and technology evolve rapidly

Webinar Series Planning

• The webinar series would provide guidance for  instructors as opposed to just students, so the community can reach a larger audience (i.e., one instructor influences many students).  The team discussed positioning themselves as a collaborative learning environment where they can both educate others and learn from each other's experiences
• Suggested strategy for building a webinar series

• Collect use-cases and identify topics for the webinars;
• Topics from the NERC and AI papers that address real-world challenges can also serve as starting points.  
• The group will connect with experts from organisations such as GA4GH, BRIDGE, Neuromatch Academy, or the Allen Institute to identify speakers who can address these topics
• Recordings may be packaged into modules for broader dissemination

• Development of a webinar series can help the group identify other resources and outreach initiatives that can be disseminated in parallel

• Discussion forums, co-branded educational content, publicly accessible resources, integration into pedagogy and faculty development programs, social media

• Different experts can share different perspectives and ideas:

• BRIDGE2AI experts can speak on data governance, GDPR, legal expertise
• GA4GH offers global reach
• Neuromatch Academy has experience with large-scale international courses

2026-03-19

Attendees: Ramona, Kaitlyn, Mathew, Milagros, William, Saskia, Jack, Ann, Johannes

Recording

Passcode: D7&j#0uK

Agenda:

1. Approval of agenda
2. Update on manuscript: Milagros
3. Next 2-year strategy discussion
4. Any other business

Meeting Summary: The meeting focused on planning the next phase of activities for the Scientific Collaboration & Education Theme Team. Four main activities were proposed during the call:  Evaluating top neuroscience tools against the NERC, developing low-resource training modules, creating fix-the-tool pilot programs, and designing next-generation training prototypes with AI integration. Participants shared challenges with software deployment and accessibility in educational settings, particularly for low-resource environments.

Manuscripts

• The NERC (Neuroscience Education Readiness Scale) manuscript was successfully submitted and is currently under peer review
• Five Principles manuscript (led by Miagros) is in its final phase

• Community members are encouraged to provide their feedback as soon as possible
• Full team to review manuscript over the weekend of March 21-22
• Submission is scheduled for March 28th

Bridging the Neuro-AI Chasm_v1.docx

Discussion on  the community’s new strategy

• Community co-lead, Matthew, proposed 4 activities to promote validation, implementation and community adoption of the manuscripts

1. Tool Evaluation

• Assess the top neurotools using NERC
• Benchmark educational readiness

2. Fix the tool pilot program

• Select 3-5 tools
• Apply NERC
• Redesign training using the 5 principles 

3. Low resource training toolkit

• Develop accessible neuroscience training for low-resource regions (Africa, Latin America, South East Asia) and under-resourced institutions around the globe
• William indicated that a toolkit would be of use to educators (not just students) to identify real-world needs
• Johannes shared that technology continues to develop and many of the tools are not education-ready. He suggested that tool developers may need to be incentivized, though it may not be within the group’s scope
• Matthew suggested running a pilot program with Ebrains and applying for funding via NeurotechEU; the training modules can be made available via Campus Plus or and  training spaces (undergraduate/graduate programs, laboratories etc.)
• Saskia indicated that it is important to ensure the community’s outputs meet the needs of educators
• Milagros suggested using a survey to find out the exact issues educators face in their daily work

4. Next-generation training prototype

• Integrate AI into training, focusing on reason-based learning approaches
• Milagros proposed developing curated, validated AI-ready skills/pipelines to use alongside the NERC framework for Cloud and ChatGPT, among others

• Jack proposed developing a platform similar to INCF that hosts educational resources, shared teaching materials and tutorials with a DOI.
• Milagros suggested the implementation of code spaces like GitHub and Docker
• The group discussed possible challenges.

• Technical barriers - compatibility across all devices and platform overload (from too many users)
• Infrastructure limitations - Universities and low-resource settings with limited access to cloud or an AI agent.
• Educational barriers  - Teaching command line skills in a short timeframe; Tools may be too complex for classroom use

• The group suggested browser-based solutions to reduce installation issues;.

Future Goals

• Landscape analysis of workarounds for deployment in low-resource settings;
• Best practices guide for deployment, workarounds, teaching strategies

External Opportunity

• Jack shared that Aperture Neuro has a call for a special issue on human neuroimaging education programs and training resources, which can be an opportunity for the group to contribute and showcase its outputs. The deadline to submit something is August 31st, 2026.

Actions

• Please feel free to add ideas for the next few goals the theme team can work on:

2026-02-19

Attendees: Milagros, Mathew, JB, Ramona, Kaitlyn, Bill

Agenda:

5. Approval of agenda
6. Update on manuscripts

1. Johannes P.
2. Milagros M.

7. Open discussion: new streams of work
8. Any other business

Recording: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/7gpNaTSV4ezDSBk9SN7rCrPicUL-XEBSZeTZw-TWPBb6NmIlmscfGZpO0rFAgQob.qdQCAWA0za3r-l6K?startTime=1771523730000 

Passcode: 5g0+B#XG

Summary: The team discussed community achievements, strategy and where to direct their efforts next. The NERC manuscript has been finalized and was submitted on Tuesday. Milagros is leading the development of the second manuscript. Community members are encouraged to add their comments and contribute, as well as provide feedback on the proposed journals/submission pathways. The target timeline is 2 weeks. The community has completed its initial two-year strategy goals and will begin defining its next plan. The team is also looking to do more outreach to expand the neuroscience community.

Community Achievements

• The group completed its initial two-year strategy goals:

• Development of key recommendations/checklists.
• Delivery of two related manuscripts.

Next steps

• The community will begin defining its next strategy.
• Proposed ideas:

• Develop educational/tutorial modules based on recommendations.
• Identify areas that complement other neuroscience communities (e.g., governance, data sharing).
• Explore collaborative opportunities across related groups.

• Plan a broader strategy discussion at the next meeting (March 19).

Community Coordination & Outreach

• Mailing lists will be reviewed to ensure broader inclusion of interested neuroscience stakeholders.
• Connect with a wider neuroscience network
• Recent contributors (e.g., NIH participants) should be included in future discussions.

Actions

• All: Provide final comments on the second manuscript (2-week push).
• Milagros: Continue manuscript updates; review journal options.
• Ramona/Kaitlyn:

• Send summary + manuscript links to the mailing list.
• Review and expand all neuro mailing lists (including checking if Karyn, David, and Ava are included in this mailing list)
• Coordinate strategy discussion for March 19.

• William: Share atlas resources and ontologies linking non-human primate and human data.

2026-01-15 - Breakout during neuroscience community meeting

Attendees: Mathew Abrams, Bill Grisham, Karyn Onyeneho, David Tate, Ava

Agenda:

1. Update on the checklist manuscript
2. Discussion about use cases for the manuscript:

• We need 1-2 use cases
• Need to apply the checklist to the use cases
• Impact of the assessment

3. All other business

Notes:

• Update on the checklist manuscript: Updates include:

• Framing the content in terms of the 3 strengths of the manuscript: educator readiness, institutional infrastructure considerations, and data governance
• New table with comparisons between NERC and other frameworks presented to participants for discussion and review (accepted to be included into the table)
• Results section needs a bit more work. The format of the current use case should be formalized and additional use cases are needed. Notes are included in the original manuscript distributed by Johannes
• Need to define the types of resources in which NERC is applicable

• Use cases:

• David recommended that we take a look at ENIGMA as a potential use case (Link to ENIGMA-U learning resources)
• Kathryn will take a look at toolboxes provided by NIA to see if any are suitable
• Note: with the current use case (EU), ENIGMA (Int’l), and NIA toolbox (US), we have a good geographic representation; but we need to make sure that we have representation across different modalities

• Other business:

• Discussed potential topics for SfN Professional Development Workshop submission

Next steps:

• Mathew to share manuscript with the team for review
• Mathew to reach out to Kim for expertise on data governance for checklist
• Kaitlyn/GA4GH to Identify Canadian representative to support this work

2025-12-18

Attendees: 

Kaitlyn B., Milagros M., Mathew A., Ann A.

Actions: 

• Mathew will review both manuscripts and provide feedback directly prior to the January 15th full community meeting
• Provide suggestions for which journal the manuscript could fit in to

Notes: 

• Initial thoughts were to merge the manuscripts, Mathew has now decided it makes more sense for them to be separate

• Reference implementation of the white paper in the manuscript

• Adding more references is the key priority for the manuscript
• Need to determine where to publish - guidance from Mathew will be helpful here

• 10 simple rules was suggested, however publications have been lacking over the past 2 years
• Once the location for publication is determined the manuscript can then be adapted as needed

• Including applicability in the manuscript was mentioned in past meetings, however it might be best for this to stay as a checklist/guidance
• Once these 2 manuscripts are finalized, the community can then shift to new projects

2025-11-20

Attendees: 

Kaitlyn B., Johannes P., Kelly S., Ann A., Milagros M., JB Poline, William G., Francis J., (DataJoint Fathom AI)

Actions:

• Johannes - Share materials with Kaitlyn to share with the broader TT
• All: Provide feedback on the draft manuscript by December 5th

• Invite tool owners to review and comment on the checklist.

• Johannes: Revise and finalize the manuscript based on feedback; target early February for submission.
• All: Provide feedback and strengthen scientific references/background in the neuro-AI education white paper.
• Francis: investigate internally at OBI about publication funding
• Johannes: assess whether the E-BRAINS grant could support article submissions
• Kaitlyn: Explore options for a website or repository to host Neuro Community resources.

Agenda:

• Recap previous work in this theme team

• White paper
• Survey 

• Discuss Manuscript draft (Folder) and group actions, including:

• Refining the checklist
• Providing positive use-case examples of methods that address checklist items

Summary:

The Neuro Community’s Scientific Collaboration and Education Theme Team meeting centered on advancing two major educational outputs: a manuscript proposing an “educational readiness checklist” for neuroscience tools, and a complementary white paper outlining core principles for neuro-AI education. The group reviewed the draft checklist, which evaluates neuroscience tools across dimensions such as technical readiness, instructor usability, and workflow transparency. Members agreed to gather structured feedback over the next two weeks and finalize the manuscript for submission in early February. In parallel, work is progressing on the neuro-AI education white paper, which may align with formats such as the “10 Simple Rules” series and will require strengthened scientific framing and clearer guiding principles.

Participants from Compute Ontario, the Ontario Brain Institute, McGill, UCLA, and other partner organizations highlighted current training initiatives, data-sharing expertise, and harmonization efforts that could support and inform both papers. The team discussed how the two documents can complement each other—using the checklist as a practical tool and the white paper as a conceptual and educational framework. They also explored dissemination pathways, such as GitHub, Zenodo, or preprint servers, and considered journal options like eLife, pending funding for article processing charges.

Next steps include inviting tool owners and experts to contribute feedback, refining the scientific foundation of the white paper, and exploring the creation of a website or shared repository to host community resources. The group will reconvene on January 15 to review progress and continue coordinating the development of both manuscripts.

Live Notes:

• Manuscript - Team to review checklist and provide feedback over the next 2 weeks

• Tool owners could test the checklist
• Manuscript to be completed over the holiday period, hopefully available for review in January before the submission in early February
• Add comments with details on contact info/email address and affiliation

• Whitepaper - focused on neuro AI

• Both papers are complementary and can proceed concurrently
• Whitepaper could reference the need for a checklist for neuroscience tools, referencing the more broad checklist in
• Next steps: Add more robust scientific references

• Feedback would help move it from a draft into something ready to submit
• Open to suggestions on which journal this could be submitted to

• https://collections.plos.org/collection/ten-simple-rules/ would require a bit of work but is a well read venue

2025-09-18

Attendees: JB, Milagros, Johannes, William, Saskia, David,Bill Grisham

Actions:

• Review whitepaper document 
• Review survey 

• Getting surveys back can be a challenge
• If possible, please share the survey through your networks to gather more feedback

• Article preparations

• Johannes is preparing an article for the group to contribute to
• This will be drafted at the end of October, with the deadline in February
• Johannes will prepare a short outline for the next meeting

• Society for neuroscience conference on November 15-19 in San Diego

• There will be a talk about using large data resources in education

• Open Educational Resources for Neuroscience: What's Out There and How to Contribute. Organizer/Moderator: Melissa Glenn
• Speaker: Andrea Nicholas, William Grisham, Thomas Newpher, Robert Calin-Jageman, Elizabeth Kirby, Rachel Penton
• Date & Time: Saturday, November 15, noon–2 p.m.

• Registration link is here

2025-06-26

Attendees: Ann Allan Jessica Seegobin, Angela Page, Milagros Marin,  Johannes Passecker, Nicole Schoer

 Regrets: JB Polline, Mathew Abrams,

Passcode: GA4GH

Meeting Recording

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/tlAUwWh_hPxsS36K917Z92DusT3C7lu7yrJ5SJKTSMpY29wDnlP26soSrrvgAZCE.tCDI5mZveYF8_Tk9?startTime=1750956946000 

Passcode: G^xB!7s+

Minutes

• Milagros provided a brief overview of the Bridging the NeuroAI chasm, noting that training shouldn’t be one-size fits all but rather adaptive and reflective of different institutional constraints, backgrounds, etc.

• Focus on building critical reasoning development, ensuring that AI serves as an active collaborator, rather than emphasizing passive automation of the tool
• Students can have technical knowledge gaps, which the tool aims to address
• The rationale of the tool was based on a previous papers  on the digital literacy challenges in higher education related to IT, AI resistance, etc., as well as former research on the decline cognitive offloading, bias, declining critical thinking skills
• Neuro-AI chasm reflects the emerging gap between AI’s function in neuroscience and the lack of training resources for researchers with the necessary critical skills to appropriately cultivate scientific reasoning  
• Generative AI paradox - captures the dual role of AI being fast and optimal, which can increase the risk of cognitive offloading, where users lack the deep understanding of the underlying science and fail to question the validity, reiterating the need for training to encompass interpretative reasoning
• The principles outlined in the white paper are driven around empowering students to ask questions, become active participants.
• The Principles offers a more reflective approach for learners to consider the efficacy of their learnings, evaluation of their own biases and limitations of their own understandings of tools in order to adjust their learning strategies, noting that AI tools should complement critical thinking, rather than replace it with the aim to encourage users to use AI as an adversarial pipeline to challenge assumptions
• Discussions in the white paper - explore the tensions in neuro-AI training design regarding speed, translucency and the infrastructure equity in education to ensure materials can be adaptable in low-infrastructure settings
• There should be a focus towards the approach of teaching, rather than the content of what to standardize
• Solutions and calls to action should provide a practical resolution for educators, developers and societies - possibly students as well. Educators should aim to empower students to adopt critical thinking, aided by using different AI modes (guest vs a more focused- power user).
• AI should be treated as a collaborative provocateur, rather than a prompter

Open discussion

• Johanness: more efforts to see where additional literature around evidence and examples of groups or individuals using AI as a collaborative provocateur?

• Milagros: this is just a draft, more robust resources are needed.

• Ann: research data management and the validity of information can occasionally be skipped by the user/student, reinforcing the need to incorporate at the beginning stages.
• Johanness: have conducted work on a survey for educating students and tool developers - here is the link: Landscape_survey_2025_clean.xlsx Feel free to add comments or relevant Questions - please do so till the first Week of July - we plan to start sharing it by Mid July latest.

Action items

• Connect with Mathew and team to discuss next steps

2025-04-17

Attendees: Karen Doyle, Francis Jeanson, Nicole Schoer, Johannes Passecker, Mathew Abrams,

Regrets: JB Polline

Meeting Recording

Next Steps:

Next meeting (May 15)

• [Milagros] to present on Bridging the NeuroAI chasm

Proposed approach:

• Step 1: Finalize Checklist

• [ALL] Continue to review checklist and add criteria
• [ALL] Identify driving use cases to check against checklist

• [Johannes and Mathew] to reach out to Ebrains

• Select 1-3 examples of tools within a category (e.g. atlasing tools from Ebrains, Canada, and US) and survey users to understand the gaps

• Step 2: Implementation: showcase applicability and benefit of checklist

• [Francis] Engage Compute Ontario and float the idea of checklist adoption.

• Step 3: Dissemination Strategy

• Publication
• Hosting the checklist on INCF
• Having groups (e.g. BRIDGE, OBI, GA4GH) link out to the INCF page

Minutes

White paper discussion

• THANK YOU JOHANNES for your contributions to the checklist

• All to review and add more criteria
• Next step: Categorize the criteria

• Specific Neuro use cases are still missing
• It will be important to add examples of group that do the checklist criteria well - this will ensure that they aren’t too vague
• To consider: How do we phrase the checklist? Is this a self assessment?
• Proposed approach:

• Refine the checklist by checking it against existing resources
• Select three examples of tools within a category (e.g. atlasing tools from Ebrains, Canada, and US) and survey users to understand the gaps

• Audience: instructors who are not experts in the tooling
• Purpose: improving usability of these tools
• Next steps: After the checklist is complete, do an implementation to showcase applicability and benefit of checklist
• Potential Implementer: ComputeOntario - OBI is working with them to develop course materials on neuroanalytics. They might be a great group to use the checklist.

• Action: Engage Compute Ontario and float the idea of checklist adoption.

Finalizing White Paper Outline: 2025-01-21

Attendees: David Kennedy, Johannes Passecker, Jack Van Horn, Mathew Abrams, Neerjah Skantharajah, Sara Morsy, JB Poline, Bill Grisham, Karen Doyle, Milagros Marin

Regrets:

Meeting Recording

Summary and Actions

Key Updates:

• Landscape Analysis:

• The group reviewed the landscape analysis for the final time during this meeting.
• While contributions to the analysis are still welcome (as it will serve as a reference during the white paper drafting process), it will no longer be a discussion item in future meetings.

• White Paper Focus:

• The group agreed that the white paper will focus on the challenges instructors face when incorporating tools and resources into their classrooms, often due to a lack of educational readiness—the extent to which a resource/tool is prepared to support effective learning.  

• Examples of these challenges include the absence of tutorials or resources being paired with overly detailed, hard-to-decipher code.

•   The main highlight of this paper will be a checklist of criteria that define high-quality educational resources (thanks to Johannes for this great idea!).

• Due Diligence: To ensure we’re building on existing work and not reinventing the wheel with this checklist, the group reviewed existing FAIR training resources to identify any overlap with the proposed checklist.

• Initial Review: Mathew conducted a preliminary review of all materials that were suggested in the meeting and recommends that all members review The 10 Simple Rules for Making Training Materials FAIR suggested by Sara Morsy. This resource provides a helpful checklist for aligning training materials with FAIR principles.  
• Despite its usefulness, there is still a need for a dedicated checklist that defines high-quality educational resources.

Action Items:

• [ALL] Review The 10 Simple Rules for Making Training Materials FAIR
• [ALL] Please share your input in this document, outlining proposed checklist criteria and including detailed information on what is needed to ensure high-quality training resources. Further instructions are included in the document.
• [ALL] Complete this form by February 7th to help us identify the best meeting time for everyone, allowing us to avoid monthly Doodle polls and set up a recurring meeting series for this group.

Minutes

Mission: draft a white paper/guidelines on how to create good educational resources to improve training resources being developed by large scale brain initiatives

• Feel free to add to the landscape analysis

• The purpose of this is to 1) see what’s out there 2) if we determine gaps in competencies as we are drafting the white paper, then these are groups we can reach out to

• Today’s focus is to determine the white paper outline

• White paper outline format

1. Introduction, background, description of problem, possible solutions, recommendations
2. Description of the problem aspects 1- x, single solution, conclusion
3. Background, description of problem, criteria that any solution must meet, acceptable solutions, conclusion

• Gap analysis + description of the problem will probably shape what we propose
• Would like to think in advance about the paper will be used - what’s the target audience and how can we format it to best serve this specific community
• In addition to the white paper, we would use the developed guidelines to create a training resource
• Choosing between #1 or #3
• International research and training is important.  Let's not divide to conquer here?
• We could approach this implementation is targeted towards North America or Europe OR make something more international - could come back to this after the criteria are developed
• #3 may work better in this case because we are presenting evaluation criteria independent of their location
• Evaluation criteria pertains specifically to uptake because the problem is that instructors don’t know how to incorporate specific resources, or even which ones are reliable enough to incorporate
• What’s important to instructors is to know which ones are viable, are road tested and can be relied on
• Could include a pain scale - how painful is this to utilize in the classroom
• Could the pain scale be included in the general criteria
• Higher level white paper that doesn’ go into evaluation of tools as there are too many tools available
• This initial paper could be at the level of sharing resources within the landscape, and sharing the good things that these groups are doing. The more sophisticated version of this could be a second paper. It would also allow us to use feedback we receive from the first paper.
• Something about practice that we can share in this white paper - here’s what others are doing and what works well for them
• This paper could also show in the landscape analysis what domains are covered (e.g. data repositories, data sharing standards, GA4GH, Neuromatch.io) there may be trends that exist and we could help fill the picture for the reader
• Borrow from the technology readiness level - an education readiness level - do you have a tutorial? Do you have metadata? Etc.
• A quick checklist to determine their “education readiness” level that’s easily accessible
• Could be categorized by level e.g. undergrad, graduate, and beyond
• There is a ‘teaching’ axis and a ‘user’ axis, which may be different
• Start by seeing if someone has already created FAIR guidelines for training resources
• We probably don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we could merge/adapt to this specific use case
• Decision: The focus will be coming up with a lightweight checklist to help tools/resources optimize themselves for education
• Decision: Background, description of problem, criteria that any solution must meet, acceptable solutions, conclusion
• Action: Neerjah + Mathew to put together summary of decisions and send to group for confirmation of plan going forward
• Action: Mathew to look into existing resources for FAIR training resources [end of week]

• Materials to review from chat

• https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007854 (from Sara Morsy)
• https://elixir-europe.org/focus-groups/fair-training
• https://f1000research.com/articles/8-251 (from Jack Van Horn)
• The tutorials we have developed for Elements are a good example of a ready-to-use interactive tutorial, contenarized in GitHub codespaces and with data ready to use as well: https://github.com/datajoint/element-array-ephys#interactive-tutorial (from Milagros Marin)

• Action: Everyone to send through guidelines for training resources, things they are currently using, and criteria they would want/need to know if they’d include it in the classroom

Kick-off Meeting: 2024-12-02

Attendees: Bill Grisham, Mathew Abrams, Francis Jeanson, Saskia de Vries, Milagros Marin, Jack Van Horn,

Regrets:

Meeting Recording

Actions

• Review and add to landscape analysis [ALL]
• Neerjah to circulate outline of white paper to group for review
• Schedule follow up meeting for end of January (purpose - finalize outline of white paper)

Minutes

Recap

• The theme of this group is to bridge the gap in neuroscience by focusing on education/training resources needed for multimodal analysis
• The Neuroscience Community Charter focuses on the mission of the larger community and identifies specific projects.goals of this theme team

• Questions to consider

• How can we complement and leverage what’s already been done? E.g. GA4GH and INCF Products
• How can we engage patients/partners?

• The team conducted a landscape analysis to determine resources that have already been developed

• We will probably like to reach out to these individuals and bring them into our team

• Initial project proposal - comprehensive white paper with best practices building educational resources to large-scale brain data tools

• Guidelines on how to prepare both students and instructors ensuring educators have the tools they need to teach and apply data analysis methods
• Teaching students not only about data analysis but also data management processes

Discussion

• NS: Adding/developing training for GA4GH standards and determining how those can be modified to neuro space
• FJ: Neuroscience encompasses things like genomics and many other modalities. White paper is an excellent starting point. Considering that things change fairly quickly, maybe we could also consider an online/dynamic resource that is being referred to in the white paper and adding to it over time.
• A living resource that is maintained on a regular basis whether that’s annual or biannual
• JVH: Living = Update on a frequent schedule or change continuously?

• MA: Regular intervals, likely once every two years
• JVH: Including versioning to avoid losing historical content
• MA: including DOI for citing

• BG: Need a strong plan to get these ideas from the white paper out there to several different audiences
• MA: Agree, including specific use cases and adding a web presence (e.g. GA4GH, INCF, Ebrains) will be important
• At a minimum we should have 2 tools - European + North American source
• MM: we also have DataJoint open source elements that will help with the multimodality aspect. One common challenge in training resources is the assumed knowledge of computational knowledge.
• MA: We can determine the required level of knowledge that users need, and point them towards resources that will give them that base level of knowledge
• A white paper + high-level summary might be an approach to consider to make this effort more public facing
• Best practices in data analysis and sharing in neuroimaging using MRI | Nature Neuroscience

Next Steps

• Meeting in January to finalize white paper outline
• After January meeting - delegate sections for completion
• Future looking - identifying applied examples to determine tool developers that need to be included in this discussion