Certified Cyberinfrastructure Facilitator Training and Development

The Certified Cyberinfrastructure Facilitator Training and Development (CCIFTD) program is a first-of-its-kind, non matriculated certification of professional development for CI Facilitators. CCIFTD’s role is to attest to proficiency in core skills needed for facilitating computing/data-intensive research, across all Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The emphasis is on crucial professional/interpersonal skills, and complementary CI technical topics. CCIFTD focuses on establishing both (a) the set of skills and (b) a means for determining whether a CI Facilitator has these skills.

Motivation: The CI workforce suffers from a critical deficit of CI Facilitators, the CI professionals who work directly with researchers to advance computing/data-intensive aspects of their research. a vital role at many research institutions. Currently, there is a clear sense of the nature and value of the CI Facilitator role, but no well-defined set of skills agreed upon by the CI Facilitator community at large.

Badges (microcredential): training module, exam, scoring rubric

Topic areas: Interpersonal Skills, Technical Skills, CI Landscape, Understanding Researchers’ Circumstances,                                            Research Data Lifecycle Management

Time cost per badge: training module 60-90 minutes, exam 20-40 minutes

Certification (macrocredential) comes from specific collections of badges. There are currently 15 badges: 7 required, 8 elective, in all topic areas