Education and Training School in Home Cage Monitoring: The ‘Whys’ and ‘Hows’

The adoption of Home Cage Monitoring (HCM) systems, as well as its effective and ethical use, requires proper education and training in this technology. This chapter explores the critical role of training in preparing researchers to handle the complexities associated with HCM. Effective education should focus on knowledge on the capabilities of HCM systems, their possible applications, technological hurdles, experimental design issues, and animal welfare implications. Hands-on training promotes proficiency, enabling users to set up, calibrate, and troubleshoot HCM systems effectively and tailor them to their own research models and scientific objectives, ensuring consistent data quality and reliable analysis. Training, moreover, aims at standardization, enabling researchers to adopt shared protocols and practices that facilitate comparability across studies and strengthen the credibility of HCM research. The COST Action TEATIME (Action CA20135 ‘Improving biomedical research by automated behaviour monitoring in the animal home cage’) held four editions of yearly 1-week training schools, two for novice and two for advanced users. It was decided early on that representatives of industry partners should join the roster of trainers to bring their expertise in specific HCM systems. It was also agreed that their contributions should be free of advertising or promotion of the companies and systems presented, and of course, of any negative comparisons between competing systems. A training school manual was drafted for future reference. These structured educational programs helped reduce the learning curve for HCM use, facilitating adoption and use of this technology and saving time and resources for research institutions. Moreover, they fostered a collaborative community of both early career and established HCM users, along with an open collaboration between academia and industry, promoting knowledge exchange and continuing skill development. The collection of trainees’ feedback and prompt integration of necessary changes, along with a reflection on course contents and teaching approaches, allowed by a stable course faculty well-coordinated with the core project management team, were key to the courses’ success. While there are several specificities of the courses relating to their subject—i.e. HCM systems—we believe that several conclusions laid out in this chapter are of general applicability and provide a template to guide future organizers of similar training events, either under the auspices of COST actions or another funding framework.