Introduction to the Workshop

Overview

Teaching: 15 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• What will the workshop cover?

• What else do I need to know about the workshop?

Objectives

• Go over logistics.

• Introduce the workshop goals.

Code of Conduct

We believe everyone can learn to code, and that a lot of you will find it very useful for things such as data analysis and plotting. Our workshops are targeted to absolute beginners, and we expect that you have zero coding experience coming in.

To provide an inclusive learning environment, we follow a specific Code of Conduct. We expect that instructors, helpers, and learners abide by this code of conduct, including practicing the following behaviors:

• Use welcoming and inclusive language.
• Be respectful of different viewpoints and experiences.
• Gracefully accept constructive criticism.
• Focus on what is best for the community.
• Show courtesy and respect towards other community members.

Introducing the instructors and helpers

We have an enthusiastic team today! The instructors and helpers will introduce themselves and what they’ll be teaching/helping with.

The Google Doc & introducing participants

Now it’s time for the participants to introduce themselves. Instead of verbally, the participants will use this Google Doc to write out their introduction. We use this doc to take communal notes during the workshop. Go to the doc and write down your name, role, affiliation, and work/research area.

The “goal” of the workshop

Now that we all know each other, let’s learn a bit more about why we’re here. We will be working with data from the St. Louis River Estuary, gather by the Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve (LSNERR). All the data we will be working with publicly available, though for our purposes we will work with data that has already gone through some subsetting and cleaning. In the next three hours, we will learn to read this data into R, understand how R formats tabular data, and use code to generate plots from these data. What’s more, we’ll learn to write clean code, which is accessible for others who wish to reproduce our analyses.

Asking questions and getting help

One last note before we get into the workshop.

If you have general questions about a topic, please raise your hand to ask it. The instructor will definitely be willing to answer!

For more specific nitty-gritty questions about issues you’re having individually, we use sticky notes to indicate whether you are on track or need help. We’ll use these throughout the workshop to help us determine when you need help with a specific issue (a helper will come help), whether our pace is too fast, and whether you are finished with exercises. If you indicate that you need help because, for instance, you get an error in your code (e.g. red sticky), a helper will message you. Feel free to also call helpers over through a hand wave if we don’t see your sticky!

Other miscellaneous things

If you’re in person, we’ll tell you where the bathrooms are, and we will take a break mid-way through the lesson. Let us know if there are any accommodations we can provide to help make your learning experience better!

Key Points

• We follow a Code of Conduct.

• This lesson content is targeted to absolute beginners with no coding experience.