FutuRSI Exchanges with Helmholtz Instructors on RSE Training in Germany

Training and continuing education in Research Software Engineering (RSE) are a crucial component for fostering sustainable and high-quality research software. FutuRSI sees it as one of its tasks to compile existing offerings in Germany and explore ways to broaden access and complement these offerings effectively.

During the TEACH V conference in Berlin (Talking about Education Across Communities in Helmholtz, September 29 - October 1, 2025, Berlin), FutuRSI organised a 30-minute workshop to discuss this topic with instructors from the Helmholtz Association.

Participants identified various existing offerings, including lectures and workshops held at different universities or within specialist network groups (e.g., FAIRytale of Software Development at deNBI, Intro to RSE at TU Dresden). These are often driven by dedicated individuals and are not typically integrated into formal programs, but are offered as electives. Within Helmholtz, the HIFIS platform provides RSE-specific workshops. Useful platforms for learning materials, research software, and supporting documentation/guides were also mentioned (https://oersi.org , https://nfdi.software , https://zenodo.org , https://readthedocs.com ).

However, a variety of expressed needs indicate that the existing offers do not satisfy the demand. Participants called for greater commitment to the offerings as well as standardized curricula and training content. The discoverability of existing opportunities is also seen as a challenge. Here the wish for an overview page or central point of contact for all offerings was expressed. Sustainability of the programs needs improvement through permanent positions for trainers and “train-the-trainer” initiatives. A central, actively maintained portal for existing software, more standardization of metadata for research software, and curation to improve adherence to the FAIR principles for software to increase reusability were also desired.

Participants saw opportunities for a central RSE institution in Germany to contribute to RSE education. They hope such an institution would provide quality assurance of teaching materials and pedagogical methods, pool distributed resources for shared use, and avoid unnecessary parallel development. They also expressed a desire for expanding existing offerings to include currently underrepresented topics such as user-centric design (e.g., persona creation and design thinking).

At the same time, participants see many opportunities for active collaboration and ways to contribute to a central institution: As e-learning providers, they are interested in making existing self-learning resources available to an audience outside Helmholtz, as well as hosting content from a broader community. There is also interest in exchanging experiences, particularly with regard to online teaching, and participants see themselves as multipliers who could integrate the offerings of a central institution into their own work and disseminate them more widely. From a purely technical point of view, there is an opportunity to incorporate libraries and other research tools into a central catalogue.

TEACH is an annual conference held within the large Helmholtz Association to discuss training within the community. The results of this workshop cannot be generalized 1-to-1 to Germany. However, they show that the topics of training and continuing education in research software development are highly relevant. This is also reflected in other needs assessments conducted for the design of a Germany-wide research institution, which are summarized in our key issues paper. The need for training and qualification opportunities in the field of RSE is considered to be generally high. Although local initiatives provide training within specialized communities, the instability caused by staff turnover in project-related research contexts is often a disadvantage. Well-trained staff leave and know-how has to be built up from scratch again and again. Access to training resources should therefore be coordinated centrally and linked to established continuing education programs. The diversity of offerings should be maintained in order to meet the different requirements for RSE.

FutuRSI will continue discussions and evaluate how the numerous educational offerings in RSE can be supported, made more visible, and meaningfully supplemented within the framework of a central institution. Broad access for all interested parties and increased sustainability of the offerings are clear goals.