Instructor Notes
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What is Research Data?
Instructor Note
Inline instructor notes can help inform instructors of timing challenges associated with the lessons. They appear in the “Instructor View”
Structuring Research Materials
Instructor Note
Episode setup: Learners should have downloaded and unzipped the exercise materials as part of the lesson setup - Folder 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 are all included. Check at the start of the session that everyone has done this before moving on to the first exercise.
Estimated timing: ~50 minutes of teaching plus 10 minutes of exercises, though the two folder structure exercises (Parts I and II) together often take 15–20 minutes including debrief.
Instructor Note
Running Part I live: Put learners into groups of 3–4. In online delivery, use breakout rooms for 5–7 minutes, then debrief in the main room. In-person, table groups work well. Remind learners not to open any files - the point is what they can (and cannot) tell from the file and folder names alone.
Key things to draw out in debrief: - Files dumped at the top level with no folder structure - Files that are hard to identify without opening them - Inconsistent or unhelpful names that make it unclear what a file contains
Prompt learners: If you came back to this folder in two years, or if a colleague unfamiliar with the project had to use it, what would they struggle with?
Instructor Note
Debriefing Part II: Ask one or two learners to share their folder structure - online, ask them to share their screen; in-person, sketch it on a whiteboard. Emphasise that there is no single correct answer, but highlight the key principles: hierarchy, meaningful names, and consistency. Common themes to look for: - Separating raw data from processed or cleaned data - Grouping conference or travel documents separately from research data - Having a clear “current work” area versus an archive
If there is time, ask learners to compare their structure with a neighbour and discuss any differences.
Instructor Note
Running the naming discussion: Give learners 3–5 minutes to look through Folder 2.2 individually before opening discussion. Typical problems learners identify include: inconsistent capitalisation, spaces in names, special characters, vague or unhelpful names, and dates written in different or ambiguous formats. Let learners surface these themselves before introducing the guidance that follows.
Instructor Note
Running the dates challenges: Parts III and IV work well as quick whole-group exercises - display the file names on screen and ask learners to answer by a show of hands or a quick poll. The UK/US date ambiguity (e.g. does 05062026 mean 5 June or 6 May?) is often a surprise even to experienced researchers. Let the discussion run briefly before moving on.
Instructor Note
Setting up the Versions Everywhere challenge: Read or paraphrase the Reinhart-Rogoff callout below to the group before setting learners off on the task - it raises the stakes and motivates the exercise. Give learners 5 minutes to look through Folder 2.3 individually, then debrief as a group.
In debrief, ask: How confident are you that you picked the right file? Most learners will have some uncertainty - that uncertainty is the teaching point.
Instructor Note
Running the tools discussion: A brief (5-minute) group discussion before introducing Git and GitHub. The key insight to steer towards is that plain text files - code, scripts, plain-text documentation - are easy for version control tools to compare line by line, while binary formats (images, Word documents, spreadsheets) are not. The concept of “diffing” (seeing exactly what changed between two versions) is what makes version control most powerful for code.
Learners often ask whether they should use Git for everything. The short answer is: not necessarily - the cloud collaboration callout that follows is a good practical alternative for documents and spreadsheets.