Like in most domains, life-long learning is essential for professionals working in the computational life sciences. The Training Group at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) aims to accommodate this need in Switzerland. The SIB consists of a network of approximately 900 computational life scientists within Switzerland, and supports research by providing open databases, analysis tools and training. The training component is organised within the SIB Training group. On an annual basis the Training Group delivers approximately 60 training events involving some 60 trainers and over 1300 trainees.

The SIB Training group strongly encourages their trainers to make their materials open and adhere to the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. Currently, the course materials for 41 courses are openly available and re-usable for both learners and other teachers. In addition, the SIB training group maintains glittr.org, a database of educational materials for the computational life sciences. Lastly, 14 e-learning modules are open to anyone on demand.

As a national institute, SIB is strongly involved in national and international collaborations. One important collaboration is with ELIXIR, the European life sciences infrastructure. The SIB Training group is active in the ELIXIR training platform that develops and maintains services, tools and guidelines to support training. Within this context, several resources have been developed that support open and FAIR educational materials, among which are standards for educational material metadata (Bioschemas), the ELIXIR portal for educational resources (TeSS), and guidelines for making training materials FAIR.