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Open and announce the course

Courses are opened and the first announcement is made approximately 2 months prior to the start of the course.

The #Manager is responsible for announcing that the course is open for applications. The full course description, including tags, must be displayed online in the Upcoming training courses page for the course to be announced. Courses are advertised using several different communication channels that target different audiences.

Opening the course to applications and announcing it

Anyone who has signed up or who has participated in a SIB course is on the SIB Training Mailing list (See section Thank participants).

  1. Edit the course in #courseadmin. You will need to:

    • Change Web registration to Yes (was No). This adds the Apply button at the bottom of the course description page on the SIB web site.

    • Change Course reg. Status to Open (was Upcoming). This changes the status of the course displayed on the SIB web site.

  2. Prepare the email to the SIB Training mailing list using this template. If needed, look at the announcement made to the mailing list for the last instance of the course and modify it if necessary.

  3. Check that the subject line (including the date and location), the course, the course description, and the link all correspond to the course you will open.

  4. Check that the changes are displayed in the Upcoming training courses page on the SIB web site. A scraper automatically retrieves the information displayed in the Upcoming training courses page on the SIB training web site and adds the course to TeSS: ELIXIR’s Training Portal where European researchers and students will see it.

  5. Send the email to the SIB Training mailing list (See OneNote).

  6. In the SIB Training mailing list Moderator interface accept the mail to send it out to all those registered. For each person that applies to the course, you will receive a mail with the Subject starting with “Activity:”. The mail will also indicate how many persons have applied to date, as well as their names and the status of their application. This will help you decide if you need to re-advertise a course because there are very few applications, or you can close a course because the number of applications exceeds the maximum number of participants allowed.

  7. Unless the course is exclusively for a Swiss audience, advertise the course in:

    • The European ELIXIR weekly briefs. The link to add the announcement is in cell A13 of the coordination-tasks-list.xlsx

    • The Société Française de Bioinformatique (SFBI) mailing list. The address is in cell A12 of the coordination-tasks-list.xlsx

  8. If the course is for a Swiss audience, send the announcement to the SIB Outreach Manager (See contact email in OneNote) asking that it be advertised in University of Geneva mailing list.

  9. If the course is on a SIB resource, send the announcement to Séverine Duvaud Team Lead, Biodata Resources (See contact email in OneNote) asking it be advertised in Expasy.

  10. If the course is of interest to biocurators, ask Biodata Resources (See contact email in OneNote) to post it on the International Society of Biocuration (ISB) mailing list.

  11. Update the line about “Course announcement (mailing) + open registration” (currently line 11) in coordination-tasks-list.xlsx

  12. The course is also announced on social media:

    • #Manager announces the course on SIB Training LinkedIn page. See Template here. If you also have a LinkedIn account, feel free to repost, especially if there are few applications.

    GROUND RULES: · Only use We (instead of I) - we talk in the name of the group
    · Post and repost training related content is fine, but do not add opinions
    · Reposting SIB content is fine with added training specific context

  13. Notify the #Trainer by email (forward the announcement for the course) that registration for their course is now opened and ask them to also advertise the course (on their web site, BlueSky, X, etc.), especially if they are not from SIB.

  14. The SIB Members update (SMU) newsletter is sent out monthly, except in July and August. Refer to the coordination-tasks-list.xlsx for the dates. The #Manager add the courses that need to be advertised in the SMU into the shared document (See contact email in OneNote). The SIB Communications Officer is in charge of sending the SMU newsletter (SIB Members Update) once a month. In the newsletter, there is a Training section in which 2-4 courses are highlighted (sometimes more).

  15. If necessary, re-advertise the course:

    • Send another email to the SIB Training mailing list using this template.

The #Manager will then proceed to register participants once the maximum number of students has been reached or one month before the course takes place, whichever comes first.