European Virtual Observatory Schools

TL;DR

The paper describes the European Virtual Observatory schools that train early-career astronomers in VO tools, gather user feedback, and foster research skills, demonstrating their effectiveness through developed training materials and participant engagement.

Contribution

It introduces the structure, approach, and training materials of the European VO schools, highlighting their role in user training and feedback collection since 2008.

Findings

Participants regularly use VO tools in research after the schools.

The schools effectively gather user feedback for VO tool improvement.

Training materials have been developed and refined over the years.

Abstract

The European Virtual Observatory (VO) initiative organises regular VO schools since 2008. The goals are twofold: i) to expose early-career European astronomers to the variety of currently available VO tools and services so that they can use them efficiently for their own research and; ii) to gather their feedback on the VO tools and services and the school itself. During the schools, VO experts guide participants on the usage of the tools through a series of predefined real science cases, an activity that took most of the allocated time. Participants also have the opportunity to develop their own science cases under the guidance of VO tutors. These schools have demonstrated to be very useful for students, since they declare to regularly use the VO tools in their research afterwards, and for us, since we have first hand information about the user needs. Here, we introduce our VO schools, the approach we follow, and present the training materials that we have developed along the years.