Data management with R, round 2 (and 3, and 4)

This summer I had the chance to try out teaching the basics of data management and the programming language R to undergraduates in a five week short course (course notes here). The material I covered was adapted from Data Carpentry's Ecology lessons.

This term I'm offering a new, improved version of the same material to graduate students in CSU Biology/BSPM 526, Evolutionary Ecology. It's been really interesting experimenting with a shorter format (50 minutes over 10 weeks versus two hours over five weeks) and noting differences with learners at a more advanced stage in their education. For one, it's a lot easier to solicit questions and responses from the learners! For another, the shorter format seems to be helping me focus on what it most important to convey with each concept we cover. Or maybe practice has improved my instruction on this material.

Coming up, I'll be helping out at a CSU Library Coding and Cookies basic R workshop, and teaching two half-day sessions on R at a Data Carpentry workshop as part of the National Data Integrity Conference at CSU next week.