connor-french / intro-r-fall2020

GCDI Introduction to R and RStudio workshop, Fall 2020.

Introduction to R and RStudio

This is a good two hour introductory workshop that can be taught as a standalone workshop, but doesn't quite fit in with the format of the DRI. It could use a little refinement that I'll detail at the end.

Credits

This workshop was written by Connor French.

Workshops

It was first taught at CUNY GC by Connor French in Fall 2020 as a two hour online synchronous workshop.

Abstract:

R is a versatile programming language, best suited for a variety of data science needs. Whether you need to run some statistical analyses, create publication-worthy data visualizations, or even publish a website, R has a multitude of tools to help you get what you need done. This workshop is intended to get interested users up to speed with the R language and the RStudio interactive developing environment. By the end, you'll be able to install and load packages, read in data, do basic data wrangling and visualization, and navigate the RStudio environment.

Requirements

• There are no requirements, other than a computer with a stable internet connection. This workshop is hosted on RStudio Cloud, so participants don't need to download R or RStudio.

Reception and feedback

Feedback was very positive. The participants really liked the code-through approach. They also appreciated the pace. One good suggestion was to add a glossary.

Needed/Desired Changes

It needs a glossary. Also, I think a short overview or link to a tutorial for installing R/RStudio would be helpful to provide participants for them to use on their own time.

Instructor notes

I first did the presentation up to the "Time to Get Familiar with RStudio!" slide. I returned to the slides after finishing the coding. I've included the slides as a pdf, but I also added the google slides version to the R_RUG/workshop_materials folder of the Digital Fellows Google Drive as an editable version. Before doing the code-through, I went through the r_basics.r script with them and gave a crash course on R basics. Then, I walked through the code-through-bare.R script with them. I had the code-through-full.html file open in a separate window to use as a reference. However, it has too much text to use as a reference. I let them know that it's a resource for when they want to work through the workshop again, though. In the bare script, I use tags like "C1", "C2", etc. to use as reference points.

Here's the recording if you want to see how I conducted the workshop here.

Here are the pdf slides here. Make sure to update the pdf version for future workshops as well.