Ready-to-teach Nextflow training material now available
Behind every successful workshop is more than a good training content. Instructors need tested exercises, suitable data and software, and a delivery plan they can trust.
Following the successful delivery of the Nextflow for the Life Sciences workshop in 2025, the Sydney Informatics Hub and Australian BioCommons developed a reusable instructor package to support trainers in delivering introductory Nextflow workshops with less preparation.
The package builds on the workshop’s openly available training content and brings together structured teaching materials, detailed instructor guidance, and the software, data and files needed for delivery. It reduces duplication of effort and gives trainers a tested starting point for planning and delivering their own workshops.Trainers can use the materials as provided or adapt them for different audiences, learning objectives and workshop formats.
The package material has already been used by Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, WEHI and Melbourne Bioinformatics to deliver an ‘Introduction to Nextflow’ workshop in July 2026. Reflecting on the preparation involved, the workshop organiser Richard Lupat said:
“This is the least preparation required for a workshop that I have ever needed to run!”
Work is underway to explore preconfigured virtual training environments as an extra support for future workshop delivery. Further information about opportunities to test these environments will be shared as the work progresses.
The team is also working towards packaging materials from the workshops ‘Nextflow on HPC’ and ‘Customising nf-core pipelines’ in the same way, with the longer-term aim of building a reusable collection of Nextflow training resources for the Australian training community.
Interested in delivering your own introductory Nextflow workshop, adapting the materials for your community, or learning more about future opportunities to test the virtual training environments? The Australian BioCommons training team can help: training@biocommons.org.au.
