Foundations & Applications of R (FAR)
Research Methodology Consulting Center
I co-designed this course with Ethan Brown and we co-taught it 3 times over summer from 2019 to 2021.
FAR is a one-week online workshop designed to help participants learn how to tidy, visualize, and model data in R. This workshop is open to all: graduate students, postdocs, faculty, lecturers, and external researchers––and no prior programming experience is required or expected. By the end of this workshop, FAR students (along with other experienced R users) will be able to attend either of the Advanced workshops (AFAR Grouped and AFAR Latent).
Goals: Provide students with 1) an understanding of the fundamental concepts of scripting and programming using the R language 2) a set of concrete skills and resources for harnessing the power of R for tidying, visualizing, and modeling social science data. The emphasis will be on using R as a tool for analyzing and understanding data rather than on the details of statistical techniques.
Structure: This workshop is primarily organized around online activities, blending asynchronous lessons with daily synchronous class discussion. The workshop employs active learning techniques to get participants programming and solving problems as quickly as possible. During asynchronous portions, participants will work on programming exercises, while both instructors check student progress and provide assistance. The workshop is led by two instructors with extensive R and teaching experience and will be limited to only 50 students to ensure an active and supportive learning environment for all. Resources will be provided to participants to summarize what was covered during the day and provide tools for further study.