Quantifying the impact of workshops promoting microbiome data standards and data stewardship

The field of microbiome research continues to grow at a rapid pace, with multi-omics approaches becoming widely used to interrogate diverse microbiome samples. However, due to lagging awareness and implementation of standards and data stewardship, many datasets are produced that are not comparable, reproducible, or reusable. In 2021, the National Microbiome Data Collaborative launched its Ambassador Program, which utilizes a community-learning model to annually train a cohort of early-career researchers in microbiome data stewardship best practices. These Ambassadors then host workshops and other events to communicate these themes to their respective microbiome research communities. To quantify the impact of this learning model for promoting awareness of and experience with microbiome data, we conducted a survey of workshop participants from events hosted by the 2023 Ambassador cohort. The 2023 cohort of 13 National Microbiome Data Collaborative Ambassadors collectively hosted 21 events, reaching over 550 researchers. The Ambassadors distributed an anonymous post-workshop survey to their event participants to quantify the effectiveness of the training materials, the workshop format, and the thematic content. From the 21 events, survey results were successfully collected for 15 of those events from a total of 122 researchers. Overall, 122 participants working with a range of microbiome types and from a variety of institutions responded to the survey and reported overwhelmingly positive experiences with the workshop content and materials, with 98% of respondents reporting that they gained knowledge from the event. Participants across the events also reported an increase in their post-workshop understanding of metadata standards, principles for microbiome data management and reporting, and the importance of standardization in microbiome data processing. Participants also expressed a willingness to apply what they learned about microbiome data stewardship to their own research. The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness of hands-on workshops and community-learning for communicating data stewardship best practices to microbiome researchers. The lessons learned and details about the implementation of this cohort-based learning model contained herein are intended to assist other groups in their efforts to create or improve similar learning strategies.