Data Skills for Education Researchers

In this workshop, you will gain experience with common file formats, data types, tools and programming languages used in educational research. You will learn how to perform critical steps in the data analysis lifecycle reproducibly, saving yourself the tedium of performing repetitive and error-prone tasks by hand. From formatting your data in ways that make it easy to work with, to data cleaning and visualization, you will get hands-on practice applying these tools to real-world educational data to solve common analysis problems.

After the workshop, participants will be able to:

• Use a spreadsheet program to format data tables in a computer-readable way.

• Use the R dplyr package to filter and subset datasets.

• Use the R ggplot package to visualize data.

• Describe the benefits of bringing Data Carpentry workshops to the DBER community.

Prerequisites

Plan to participate and meet new friends! You will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what you have learned to your own research problems. You will need a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that you have administrative privileges on. Instructions for installing required software will be provided prior to the workshop. Workshop materials will be freely available online after the workshop (all Data Carpentry materials are licensed CC-BY) and you are actively encouraged to contribute to expansion and further development of the Data Carpentry Education curriculum. No prior experience is required.