1. Network basic concepts 
2. Introduction to Palladio 
3. Example: using the Chinese Headtax data to visualize historical migration patterns 
4. The caveats behind Palladio's ease of use 

If you are curious about what exactly "network" is, you may read this blog post Demystifying Networks by Scott B. Weingart. 

Technical requirements: Computer with access to the internet via an up-to-date browser.

This webinar series is targeted at international students with limited experience writing academic English, “proficient users” with a dominant language other than English, and students whose dominant language is English. It is equally concerned with developing academic writers as it is improving academic texts. The webinars move from the micro (vocabulary, verbs, paraphrasing) to the macro (underlying structures and patterns of development in scientific writing).

Problem-solution movement is an important underlying structure in academic writing. Learn how to organize an academic argument by following problem-solution organization.

This webinar series is targeted at international students with limited experience writing academic English, “proficient users” with a dominant language other than English, and students whose dominant language is English. It is equally concerned with developing academic writers as it is improving academic texts. The webinars move from the micro (vocabulary, verbs, paraphrasing) to the macro (underlying structures and patterns of development in scientific writing).

Learn how to organize words, clauses, and information in ways that are coherent and cohesive.

This webinar series is targeted at international students with limited experience writing academic English, “proficient users” with a dominant language other than English, and students whose dominant language is English. It is equally concerned with developing academic writers as it is improving academic texts. The webinars move from the micro (vocabulary, verbs, paraphrasing) to the macro (underlying structures and patterns of development in scientific writing).

Learn how to gradually develop a topic in a paragraph using the linking pattern based on the principles of theme and information flow.

This webinar series is targeted at international students with limited experience writing academic English, “proficient users” with a dominant language other than English, and students whose dominant language is English. It is equally concerned with developing academic writers as it is improving academic texts. The webinars move from the micro (vocabulary, verbs, paraphrasing) to the macro (underlying structures and patterns of development in scientific writing).

Learn how to organize information in a paragraph using the repeated theme pattern—useful for defining, explaining, or analyzing a complex concept.

This webinar series is targeted at international students with limited experience writing academic English, proficient users with a dominant language other than English, and students whose dominant language is English. It is equally concerned with developing academic writers as it is improving academic texts. The webinars move from the micro (vocabulary, verbs, paraphrasing) to the macro (underlying structures and patterns of development in scientific writing).

Learn how to organize information in a paragraph using the super theme pattern—especially useful for describing complex system and ideas.

This webinar series is targeted at international students with limited experience writing academic English, “proficient users” with a dominant language other than English, and students whose dominant language is English. It is equally concerned with developing academic writers as it is improving academic texts. The webinars move from the micro (vocabulary, verbs, paraphrasing) to the macro (underlying structures and patterns of development in scientific writing).

Do you want to share your research and expertise with the media? This introductory session with SFU’s Tiffany Akins, Director of media relations and public affairs and Valorie Crooks, Professor, Geography will set you on the path to engage with the media.

Presenters:

• Tiffany Akins
• Valorie Crooks

Thinking about using Twitter to mobilize your research? Join SFU’s Ian Young, Assistant Director, Digital Communications, and Scott Lear, Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, to learn about using Twitter to advance your research communications.

Presenters:

• Ian Young
• Scott Lear

There’s a revolution in chart design and data visualization these days that is sweeping the research and business communities alike. In this session Kylie Hutchinson, evaluation consultant, shares simple tricks and techniques for enhancing the potential of your quantitative and qualitative data to inform and inspire people to action.

Presenter:

• Kylie Hutchinson

Evaluations often inform decision-making. Evaluating your research impact can inform funders’, promotion committees’, and your community partners’ decisions about supporting your research. Research impact reaches well beyond journal impact factors, it includes all your research activities and outputs to engage or inform your community. Knowledge gained from evaluation can also help you to optimize the efficient use of resources invested in knowledge mobilization activities and thereby reduce waste. In this two hour, interactive workshop facilitated by experts in evaluation and knowledge mobilization you will be introduced to evaluating the impact of your knowledge mobilization efforts (engagement, communication, dissemination, etc.). Participants will leave with a preliminary draft of their logic model and evaluation plan with feedback and support from facilitators.

This two hour interactive workshop is facilitated by Susan Chunick and Lupin Battersby, experts in evaluation and knowledge mobilization. They will introduce you to evaluating the impact of your knowledge mobilization efforts (engagement, communication, dissemination, etc.) and guide you through drafting a logic model and evaluation plan.

Learning objectives:

1. Understand the basics of evaluation (terminology, types, cycle)
2. Understand what a logic model is and why it is useful
3. Able to formulate evaluation questions
4. Understand how to draft a logic model and evaluation plan

A brief overview of Intellectual Property, things to look out for, and tips for researchers for navigating IP.

Presenters:

• Kamaldeep Sembi
• Donald Taylor

Do you work with research data in spreadsheets? If so, this workshop is designed for you! Good data organization is the foundation of your research project, and so we will be covering the best practices for Data Organization in Spreadsheets, according to Data Carpentry. Then we’ll look at formatting values, fixing dates, dealing with missing data, merging/splitting columns, variable names, and more. By the end, you’ll be prepared to take your spreadsheets to the next level. Note that this workshop will not teach you how to use macros or code inside spreadsheets; this is mainly because such approaches are not efficient for data analysis, and are not easily reproducible.

• You need to have Git bash installed on your computer. We will not be using GitHub, so no need for a GitHub account.
• You need a remote secure shell (SSH) client installed:
  • If you are on a Mac or Linux laptop, you already have it installed.
  • If you are on Windows and don't have SSH installed (or don't know what it is), we recommend you install Ubuntu on your windows OS before the workshop. We will guide you through installing SSH before the class. 
• We assume no previous knowledge of the Linux command line or version control.

This multi-day workshop is designed for non-science students interested in the statistical computing program R. No prior knowledge of R is required. Often data outside of the sciences includes textual data, such as a corpus or series of surveys. In this workshop we’ll learn how to process textual data in R, as well as the basic skills to start analyzing it. Specific topics covered include the R environment (directories, workspace, scripts, and packages), data structures (vector, matrix, data frames, lists), and the beginnings of simple data analysis (built-in statistical packages, elementary statistics, etc.).

Note: Workshop participants will need have R and RStudio installed on their device prior to joining the workshop.

Python is a popular language for scientific computing, and great for general-purpose programming as well. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including data structures, and popular data science libraries such as pandas and numpy. This workshop uses curricula from Software Carpentry, whose mission is to help researchers get more work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic lab skills for scientific computing.

Setup & Software Installation

Participants will need to install Python on their device.

We will be using Python 3.7 and Jupyter notebooks throughout the workshop. The easiest way to install is via Anaconda https://docs.anaconda.com/anaconda/install/. We will also explore incorporating an IDE such as PyCharm https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/, please ensure you install this. 

In addition to this, please make sure you install the following Python dependencies:

Matplotlib (Instructions https://matplotlib.org/3.1.1/users/installing.html  )
Numpy (Instructions https://scipy.org/install.html  )
Pandas (Instructions https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/install.html)
Plotly  (Instructions https://pypi.org/project/plotly/)
 

Prerequisite:

This workshop is designed for people with no background in Python.

Text mining techniques can be applied to various data sources (e.g., newspaper articles, emails, online discussion posts, etc.) to efficiently extract useful data for different research purposes. For example, health science researchers may be interested in investigating a frequency of a particular disease name mentioned in a large set of newspaper articles. Educational researchers, on the other side, may wish to extract and categorize students' opinions from discussion forum in a high enrollment course. R offers a comprehensive set of functionalities for text mining. In this workshop, you will learn how to implement basic methods for preprocessing textual data, metadata management, a creation of term-document matrices over the collection of textual documents, sentiment analysis, text tokenization, word relationship extraction and text visualization.

Requirements:

• Participants will need to have R and RStudio installed on their device prior to attending the workshop
• Familiarity with R and the RStudio environment including an understanding of basic functionality such as object assignment, data structures, and running scripts 

This series of lessons will introduce you to the programming language R.  R is an open-source, widely used, and increasingly popular tool for statistical and data analyses, text mining, geospatial analysis, modelling, and a growing number of other applications. No prior knowledge is required. Students will learn the skills needed to start analyzing their own data.

The topics covered include:

• the R environment (directories, workspace, scripts, and packages),
• simple commands to get you started,
• data structures (vector, matrix, data frames, lists),
• basic data analysis tools (built-in statistical packages, plotting, etc.)

 As time permits, an introduction to functions may also be covered.

Requirements:

• Participants need to install the latest versions of R and RStudio prior to attending the workshop.

Although R is known for its statistical computing and graphical capabilities, it also provides many powerful tools for handling, processing, and analyzing strings and text data. This workshop gives an introduction to handling strings using both Base R and the stringr package, and an introduction to regular expressions in R.

By the end of this workshop you will be able to:

• use common operations and functions to manipulate strings
• learn what regular expressions are and how to use them in R
• apply these concepts to perform text analysis in R

Requirements:

• You need to have Git bash installed on your computer. We will not be using GitHub, so no need for a GitHub account.
• You need a remote secure shell (SSH) client installed:
  • If you are on a Mac or Linux laptop, you already have it installed.
  • If you are on Windows and don't have SSH installed (or don't know what it is), we recommend you install Ubuntu on your windows OS before the workshop. We will guide you through installing SSH before the class. 
• We assume no previous knowledge of the Linux command line or version control.

Want to make your research and writing more efficient? Hate the last minute rush of trying to create a correctly formatted bibliography? This workshop is for you! We will introduce Zotero, a citation management tool that can help you import, organize, share, and manage your citations and documents, as well as create correctly formatted in-text citations and bibliographies in almost any style -- in seconds.

Note: In advance of the workshop, participants should: register for a Zotero account and download and install Zotero 5.0.

• What is the travel route of the Anna's hummingbird (Calypte anna)? Does it pass close to areas where predators are present, specifically those which prey on eggs?

• Are neighbourhoods with low socioeconomic status spatially correlated to high morbidity rates?

• Or, a more pressing question, to what extent has mobility changed due to social distancing interventions against COVID-19?

Many of these questions ask about the spatial relationship between two or more phenomena. This workshop is an introduction to spatial thinking and the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This workshop assumes attendees have no previous experience with GIS.

Software

ArcGIS Online. You do not need to install any software but need to send email to gis-software@sfu.ca to request an ArcGIS online account if you wish to participate the hands-on part.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• think spatially about their research;
• understand the elements of GIS;
• use a web-based GIS environment (ArcGIS Online)
• create simple maps using geospatial data;
• look for and find geospatial data and resources.  

Core competencies
finding and using spatial data, projections, spatial thinking, map essentials

You’ve likely used Google Maps, Yelp, or Craigslist, which all have integrated web map elements, but have you ever thought of creating a web map for your research project? An interactive web map is a great tool for both data exploration and communicating your research with a wide audience, academic and public alike.

The workshop will begin with a basic overview of technologies, principles, and terminology related to web mapping, such as map tiles and web services. The remainder of the workshop will introduce you to using ArcGIS Online to create a web map.

Software

ArcGIS Online. You do not need to install any software but need to send email to gis-software@sfu.ca to request an ArcGIS online account at least one day ahead of the workshop if you wish to participate the hands-on part.

GIS software doesn’t have to be expensive! QGIS is a free, open source GIS platform with powerful tools and wide variety of plugins. Learn how to use the basic tools in QGIS for your spatial projects. 

Learning Outcomes: By the end of this workshop you will be able to:

• Import data to and export data from QGIS
• Edit data within QGIS
• Do basic vector analysis in QGIS
• Do basic raster analysis in QGIS
• Export simple maps using the layout manager

Software: Please install QGIS on your computer beforehand. QGIS is available on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android.

Core Competencies: vector analysis, raster analysis, data management

Maps are great tools for enhancing how you communicate your research to diverse audiences, and when combined with compelling storytelling empowered by web technology, the communication will be even more impactful!  ArcGIS StoryMaps is an online storytelling tool that enables you to integrate interactive maps from ArcGIS Online with multimedia content (audio, video, graphs, charts, apps, and more) to create an immersive storytelling experience.

Looking for inspiration? Check out the story maps gallery to see the ways that story maps have been used across disciplines.

This workshop will cover:

• Create a story on ArcGIS StoryMaps: add texts and multimedia content
• Create a web map on ArcGIS online and embed it in StoryMaps.

Software

You need to send email to gis-software@sfu.ca to request an ArcGIS online account if you wish to participate the hands-on part.

Why use Google Earth Engine?

Want to enhance your research with satellite imagery? Google Earth Engine (not to be confused with Google Earth) allows anyone to access and process satellite imagery quickly and easily. Using a few lines of simple code, you can access images for a region, display a map, look for temporal or spatial trends, export data and statistics, and much more. Previously, remote sensing required downloading huge datasets and high computing power to process the data, but Google Earth Engine takes care of that by storing and processing 50+ years of earth observation data on Google’s servers. 

Topics covered

In this introductory workshop we will use Google Earth Engine Javascript API to make maps using satellite images, perform calculations, and plot results. This workshop will loosly follow the material at https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/tutorials/ttt. Tentative schedule:

Part 1

• GEE overview
• JavaScript in 5 minutes
• Client vs Server operations
• Accessing and viewing satellite images
• Image computation
• Reductions
• Image collections

Part 2

• Map functions
• Compositing and mosaicing
• Classifying
• Charting
• Exporting data

Prerequisites

No previous experience with Earth Engine or JavaScript is necessary, but some basic programming experience and basic knowledge of remote sensing and/or GIS are highly desirable. Willingness to learn programming is required.

Software

Participants should have Chrome installed, and register in advance for a free account at https://earthengine.google.com/signup. 

This workshop will introduce you to ArcGIS Collector, an Esri app, which allows you to use your mobile device as a tool for collecting spatial/non-spatial data in the field and seamlessly add it to a web map. This workshop will appeal to a range of disciplines where researchers need to collect field data, such as biology, ecology, geography, natural resource management, archeology, and more.

The workshop will cover:

• Publish a feature layer on ArcGIS online, change the settings to enable editing, set up attributes
• Create a web map which will serve as the interface for adding data
• Use Collector to add data in the field
• Enable syncing (this is useful for off-line use where connection is low).

Software

• You need to send email to gis-software@sfu.ca to request an ArcGIS online account if you wish to participate the hands-on part.
• iOS or Android Mobile Device (phone and/or tablet), download and install ArcGIS Collector app.

Making a map isn’t difficult, but making a visually appealing map is much harder. A bad map is difficult to understand, and makes viewers more likely to ignore it entirely. A beautiful map will not only better communicate your ideas, but can transform an average poster, paper, or presentation into a great one.

Learning Outcomes: By the end of this workshop you will be able to:

• Import data into QGIS
• Find and use custom base maps
• Understand the elements of good cartographic design
• Use QGIS map layouts to make maps faster and more consistently
• Export maps for publication

Software:

Please install QGIS, a free and open source GIS platform, on your computer beforehand. QGIS is available on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android.

Core Competencies: cartography, map layout, basemaps

You’ve likely used Google Maps, Yelp, or Craigslist, which all have integrated web map elements, but have you ever thought of creating a web map for your research project? An interactive web map is a great tool for both data exploration and communicating your research with a wide audience, academic and public alike.

Leaflet is one of the most popular open-source JavaScript libraries for interactive maps. Here’s an example of a web map created with Leaflet from The New York Times. This workshop will introduce you to Leaflet for R, an R package, which makes it easy to integrate and control Leaflet maps in R without knowledge of JavaScript. You can create interactive web maps right in R Studio! The topics covered include:

• Web mapping basics (map titles, web services, etc)
• Using the Leaflet package for R to add titles, markers, popups, create a theme map, change basemap, etc.
• Host and publish your web map through Github

Requirements:

Familiarity with R and the RStudio environment. 

Software

Participants need to install the latest versions of R and RStudio prior to attending the workshop.

You’ve likely used Google Maps, Yelp, or Craigslist, which all have integrated web map elements, but have you ever thought of creating a web map for your research project? An interactive web map is a great tool for both data exploration and communicating your research with a wide audience, academic and public alike.

The workshop will begin with a basic overview of technologies, principles, and terminology related to web mapping, such as map tiles and web services. The remainder of the workshop will introduce you to using ArcGIS Online to create a web map.

Software

ArcGIS Online. You do not need to install any software but need to send email to gis-software@sfu.ca to request an ArcGIS online account at least one day ahead of the workshop if you wish to participate the hands-on part.

Maps are great tools for enhancing how you communicate your research to diverse audiences, and when combined with compelling storytelling empowered by web technology, the communication will be even more impactful!  ArcGIS StoryMaps is an online storytelling tool that enables you to integrate interactive maps from ArcGIS Online with multimedia content (audio, video, graphs, charts, apps, and more) to create an immersive storytelling experience.

Looking for inspiration? Check out the story maps gallery to see the ways that story maps have been used across disciplines.

This workshop will cover:

• Create a story on ArcGIS StoryMaps: add texts and multimedia content
• Create a web map on ArcGIS online and embed it in StoryMaps.

Software

You need to send email to gis-software@sfu.ca to request an ArcGIS online account if you wish to participate the hands-on part.

This workshop will introduce you to ArcGIS Collector, an Esri app, which allows you to use your mobile device as a tool for collecting spatial/non-spatial data in the field and seamlessly add it to a web map. This workshop will appeal to a range of disciplines where researchers need to collect field data, such as biology, ecology, geography, natural resource management, archeology, and more.

The workshop will cover:

• Publish a feature layer on ArcGIS online, change the settings to enable editing, set up attributes
• Create a web map which will serve as the interface for adding data
• Use Collector to add data in the field
• Enable syncing (this is useful for off-line use where connection is low).

Software

• You need to send email to gis-software@sfu.ca to request an ArcGIS online account if you wish to participate the hands-on part.
• iOS or Android Mobile Device (phone and/or tablet), download and install ArcGIS Collector app.

You’ve likely used Google Maps, Yelp, or Craigslist, which all have integrated web map elements, but have you ever thought of creating a web map for your research project? An interactive web map is a great tool for both data exploration and communicating your research with a wide audience, academic and public alike.

Leaflet is one of the most popular open-source JavaScript libraries for interactive maps. Here’s an example of a web map created with Leaflet from The New York Times. This workshop will introduce you to Leaflet for R, an R package, which makes it easy to integrate and control Leaflet maps in R without knowledge of JavaScript. You can create interactive web maps right in R Studio! The topics covered include:

• Web mapping basics (map titles, web services, etc)
• Using the Leaflet package for R to add titles, markers, popups, create a theme map, change basemap, etc.
• Host and publish your web map through Github

Requirements:

Familiarity with R and the RStudio environment. 

Software

Participants need to install the latest versions of R and RStudio prior to attending the workshop.

Python is a popular language for scientific computing, and great for general-purpose programming as well. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including data structures, and popular data science libraries such as pandas and numpy. This workshop uses curricula from Software Carpentry, whose mission is to help researchers get more work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic lab skills for scientific computing.

Setup & Software Installation

Participants will need to install Python on their device.

We will be using Python 3.7 and Jupyter notebooks throughout the workshop. The easiest way to install is via Anaconda https://docs.anaconda.com/anaconda/install/. We will also explore incorporating an IDE such as PyCharm https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/, please ensure you install this. 

In addition to this, please make sure you install the following Python dependencies:

Matplotlib (Instructions https://matplotlib.org/3.1.1/users/installing.html  )
Numpy (Instructions https://scipy.org/install.html  )
Pandas (Instructions https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/install.html)
Plotly  (Instructions https://pypi.org/project/plotly/)
 

Prerequisite:

This workshop is designed for people with no background in Python.

Description

Questions about working with NVivo? Get answers.

Join us for online office hours hosted by Graduate NVivo Peers in BB Collaborate in Canvas. Self-enroll in the Canvas course and drop in with your questions. No experience with NVivo is necessary.

NVivo is a qualitative data analysis software program, but what does that mean -- and what does it mean for your research? Find out what NVivo is, when to use it, and how to get started.

In this hands-on introductory workshop, you'll take a tour of the NVivo software environment, using sample data. You’ll be introduced to NVivo’s functions and you’ll leave equipped with the basic info you need to begin working with NVivo. Topics introduced may include importing files and beginning coding.

This workshop is suitable for those with little or no experience using NVivo or other qualitative data analysis software.

Note: Before the workshop, participants should download and install the latest version of NVivo. You can download NVivo and the license key with your SFU computing ID by using the self-serve download link here. If you are unable to get past the authentication page, then please email nvivo-rc@sfu.ca.

This interactive workshop introduces importing and coding of literature review materials and key tools that can be particularly helpful when reviewing literature in your area of research.

Topics covered include:

• introducing NVivo and setting up a project
• working with your information
• identifying themes, topics and ideas and collecting data to support them
• using tools such as text search query, matrix coding query, and Framework Matrix.

What will you achieve from this session? You will have the knowledge to set up a literature review in NVivo, and begin to work with your information. You will also be able to use NVivo to organize your content and begin to identify themes, topics or ideas. It is appropriate for those who have had some experience with NVivo. For more information about NVivo at SFU, please visit NVivo Software for Research Analysis.

Notes:

• Before the workshop, participants should download and install the latest version of NVivo. You can download NVivo and the license key with your SFU computing ID by using the self-serve download link here. If you are unable to get past the authentication page, then please email nvivo-rc@sfu.ca.
• Participants should also have some familiarity with citation management software (Zotero, Mendeley, Refworks, EndNote, etc). Zotero will be used during this workshop.

This interactive workshop introduces importing and coding of literature review materials and key tools that can be particularly helpful when reviewing literature in your area of research.

Topics covered include:

• introducing NVivo and setting up a project
• working with your information
• identifying themes, topics and ideas and collecting data to support them
• using tools such as text search query, matrix coding query, and Framework Matrix.

What will you achieve from this session? You will have the knowledge to set up a literature review in NVivo, and begin to work with your information. You will also be able to use NVivo to organize your content and begin to identify themes, topics or ideas. It is appropriate for those who have had some experience with NVivo. For more information about NVivo at SFU, please visit NVivo Software for Research Analysis.

Notes:

• Before the workshop, participants should download and install the latest version of NVivo. You can download NVivo and the license key with your SFU computing ID by using the self-serve download link here. If you are unable to get past the authentication page, then please email nvivo-rc@sfu.ca.
• Participants should also have some familiarity with citation management software (Zotero, Mendeley, Refworks, EndNote, etc). Zotero will be used during this workshop.

Need help taking the next step with NVivo? If you’re already comfortable with bringing in documents and coding them, you’re ready to move on to analyzing your material. In this hands-on workshop, Graduate Peer NVivo Facilitators will walk you through visualizations and queries using sample data.

Need help taking the next step with NVivo? If you’re already comfortable with bringing in documents and coding them, you’re ready to move on to analyzing your material. In this hands-on workshop, Graduate Peer NVivo Facilitators will walk you through visualizations and queries using sample data.

NVivo is a qualitative data analysis software program, but what does that mean -- and what does it mean for your research? Find out what NVivo is, when to use it, and how to get started.

In this hands-on introductory workshop, you'll take a tour of the NVivo software environment, using sample data. You’ll be introduced to NVivo’s functions and you’ll leave equipped with the basic info you need to begin working with NVivo. Topics introduced may include importing files and beginning coding.

This workshop is suitable for those with little or no experience using NVivo or other qualitative data analysis software.

Notes: Before the workshop, participants should download and install the latest version of NVivo. You can download NVivo and the license key with your SFU computing ID by using the self-serve download link here. If you are unable to get past the authentication page, then please email nvivo-rc@sfu.ca.

This multi-day workshop is designed for non-science students interested in the statistical computing program R. No prior knowledge of R is required. Often data outside of the sciences includes textual data, such as a corpus or series of surveys. In this workshop we’ll learn how to process textual data in R, as well as the basic skills to start analyzing it. Specific topics covered include the R environment (directories, workspace, scripts, and packages), data structures (vector, matrix, data frames, lists), and the beginnings of simple data analysis (built-in statistical packages, elementary statistics, etc.).

Note: Workshop participants will need have R and RStudio installed on their device prior to joining the workshop.

Text mining techniques can be applied to various data sources (e.g., newspaper articles, emails, online discussion posts, etc.) to efficiently extract useful data for different research purposes. For example, health science researchers may be interested in investigating a frequency of a particular disease name mentioned in a large set of newspaper articles. Educational researchers, on the other side, may wish to extract and categorize students' opinions from discussion forum in a high enrollment course. R offers a comprehensive set of functionalities for text mining. In this workshop, you will learn how to implement basic methods for preprocessing textual data, metadata management, a creation of term-document matrices over the collection of textual documents, sentiment analysis, text tokenization, word relationship extraction and text visualization.

Requirements:

• Participants will need to have R and RStudio installed on their device prior to attending the workshop
• Familiarity with R and the RStudio environment including an understanding of basic functionality such as object assignment, data structures, and running scripts 

This series of lessons will introduce you to the programming language R.  R is an open-source, widely used, and increasingly popular tool for statistical and data analyses, text mining, geospatial analysis, modelling, and a growing number of other applications. No prior knowledge is required. Students will learn the skills needed to start analyzing their own data.

The topics covered include:

• the R environment (directories, workspace, scripts, and packages),
• simple commands to get you started,
• data structures (vector, matrix, data frames, lists),
• basic data analysis tools (built-in statistical packages, plotting, etc.)

 As time permits, an introduction to functions may also be covered.

Requirements:

• Participants need to install the latest versions of R and RStudio prior to attending the workshop.

A growing amount of data is available over the web. However, this data is usually presented in an unstructured HTML format which poses a challenge to researchers who want to automatically capture the data and convert it into a form appropriate for analysis. Web scraping is a computational method that offers means to meet such challenges. In this workshop you will learn how to scrape unstructured web pages using rvest R package and prepare the captured data for analysis. You will gain some hands-on experience working on a few small projects that underlie common scraping strategies/issues. The last project will include scraping of multiple web pages.

Requirements 

• Functional knowledge of commonly used base R commands (for an overview see https://www.rstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/base-r.pdf)
• Participants will need to have R and RStudio installed on their device prior to attending the workshop

You’ve likely used Google Maps, Yelp, or Craigslist, which all have integrated web map elements, but have you ever thought of creating a web map for your research project? An interactive web map is a great tool for both data exploration and communicating your research with a wide audience, academic and public alike.

Leaflet is one of the most popular open-source JavaScript libraries for interactive maps. Here’s an example of a web map created with Leaflet from The New York Times. This workshop will introduce you to Leaflet for R, an R package, which makes it easy to integrate and control Leaflet maps in R without knowledge of JavaScript. You can create interactive web maps right in R Studio! The topics covered include:

• Web mapping basics (map titles, web services, etc)
• Using the Leaflet package for R to add titles, markers, popups, create a theme map, change basemap, etc.
• Host and publish your web map through Github

Requirements:

Familiarity with R and the RStudio environment. 

Software

Participants need to install the latest versions of R and RStudio prior to attending the workshop.

Although R is known for its statistical computing and graphical capabilities, it also provides many powerful tools for handling, processing, and analyzing strings and text data. This workshop gives an introduction to handling strings using both Base R and the stringr package, and an introduction to regular expressions in R.

By the end of this workshop you will be able to:

• use common operations and functions to manipulate strings
• learn what regular expressions are and how to use them in R
• apply these concepts to perform text analysis in R

Requirements:

Tableau is a data visualization tool that is being used to help analyze data and illustrate the patterns and insights behind them. This online, interactive workshop will introduce researchers and students to Tableau Public, a free access version of Tableau.

You will leave this workshop with an understanding of how to:

• connect datasets to your Tableau workbook;
• create a variety of basic chart types (including bar charts, line graphs, and maps);
• publish and share interactive charts and graphs.

Graduate students are always encouraged to publish but often without really knowing what that means or how to start. This workshop will focus on navigating the peer review process and will also touch on the topics of open access, working with an editor, and co-authorship.  It will include a discussion of copyright transfer agreements and licenses and provide insight into publishing venues for assuring your research has the best possible visibility, accessibility, and impact.

A few questions this session will help to answer:

• How does the publishing cycle work?
• How can you assess potential publishing venues?
• What is peer review and how can you respond to reviewer comments?
• What rights can you retain to your published research?
• What are predatory publishers and how can you avoid them?

Description: Join the Thesis Writing Group to make some serious progress on your thesis! The Thesis Writing Group is modeled after other successful online writing groups that use scheduled time to work on their writing with the (quiet) presence and support of other writers. The Research Commons remains devoted to supporting SFU graduate student researchers, even though we are now working from a distance!

What you can expect

The Thesis Writing Group will be held via Zoom. It will be hosted and moderated by members of the Graduate Writing Facilitator team, who will be available for writing support, along with a Librarian for research support. An Assistant for Theses will also be available for some of the sessions for any questions about using the thesis template, formatting, or the thesis submission process. The sessions will be held on Fridays, 9:00 am – 12 noon for 8 weeks, starting February 5th, 2021 and concluding March 26th, 2021.

The online writing group format

Some of you may already be familiar with or have participated in online writing groups. For both those with and without experience, we encourage you to join us for this unique experience! Like Thesis Boot Camp that some of you may be familiar with, the group will begin each session by briefly checking in and setting goals in small groups before turning to dedicated writing time. Participants can request support from our team through the chat feature, and consultations/discussions will take place in a breakout room. The 3-hour sessions will conclude with the group coming together and discussing any reflections or areas of interest/concern.

Writers will be asked to keep their microphones muted while writing, and the use of webcams is welcome but entirely optional for each participant. 

Registration

Registration is available for all 8-weeks of sessions combined. We ask that registered participants commit to attending each session to the extent that their schedules allow, and that those who would like to join but know in advance that they will not be available to attend one or several sessions to please let us know in advance. Similar to Thesis Boot Camp registration, this is to ensure that we offer ample resources to best support students dedicated to making serious progress on their theses during this time period.

Please register by Tuesday, February 2nd at 4:00pm, after which registrants will be contacted with a confirmation and further instructions.

If you have any questions about the Thesis Writing Group, please contact Robyn Long, Writing Services Coordinator for graduate students, at robyn_long@sfu.ca.

After you have defended, the final step for graduation eligibility is submitting your thesis, project, or extended essay(s) to the Library. This workshop will walk you through the thesis submission process.

Note: A good time to take this workshop is sometime during the semester that you’ll be defending or sometime after you know when your defence date is.

You will learn:

1. How to log into the Thesis Registration System (TRS)

2. What required documents you need to upload to the TRS

3. What “if applicable” documents you need to upload to the TRS

4. What happens after you have submitted

The SFU Library thesis template is a Microsoft Word file designed to assist students in preparing theses, projects, and extended essay(s) in accordance with formatting standards and requirements for submission to the Library.

There are 3 parts to this workshop:

1. SFU Library's research data specialists will give instruction on how to store, preserve (archive) and, if appropriate, share research data for future uses. (15 to 20 minutes)

2. SFU Copyright Office will briefly explain copyright law as it relates to reproducing copyright protected material in your thesis and other published works, and explain how to request permission from copyright holders when required. (20 to 30 minutes)

3. For the remainder of the time, the Theses Office will walk through the overall structure of your thesis and demonstrate the functionality of the thesis template. You will learn how to:

• download the thesis template (a Microsoft Word file) and set up some defaults
• format your text using styles (ie. block quotes, lists, references, etc.)
• insert figures/images and tables and generate auto-numbered captions
• update the Table of Contents, List of Tables and List of Figures
• bring in text from other documents

Join SFU Library's Writer in Residence, Mark Winston, for a full-day, hands-on workshop on writing for public audiences.

Have you thought about raising your profile by publishing opinion pieces in major newspapers and magazines, blog posts, or even a trade book, focused on a broad, non-academic audience? Interested in expanding your influence by effectively communicating your research and other activities to wider audiences?

Workshop participants will have the opportunity to communicate their own work through effective, compelling and engaging writing. We’ll work on developing brevity, clarity and impact, gaining confidence and skill in using your unique voice and style to tell your story with greater proficiency.

This all-day workshop will be limited to eight participants, who will work on their own distinctive projects. Format will be hands-on and participatory, focused on clear thinking, succinctness, simplicity, storytelling and bringing key messages front and center, using intensive group feedback, editing and revisions. We’ll also discuss audiences, outlets and the nuts and bolts of publishing a non-academic piece. Participants will leave the workshop with writing they could build on for publication.

This workshop will alternate between online sessions focused on nonfiction writing strategies, offline writing exercises, online feedback and editing, and offline breaks.

Learn more about Mark Winston and the SFU Library Non-Fiction Writer in Residence Program.

Graduate students are always encouraged to publish but often without really knowing what that means or how to start. This workshop will focus on navigating the peer review process and will also touch on the topics of open access, working with an editor, and co-authorship.  It will include a discussion of copyright transfer agreements and licenses and provide insight into publishing venues for assuring your research has the best possible visibility, accessibility, and impact.

A few questions this session will help to answer:

• How does the publishing cycle work?
• How can you assess potential publishing venues?
• What is peer review and how can you respond to reviewer comments?
• What rights can you retain to your published research?
• What are predatory publishers and how can you avoid them?

Learning how to skillfully use our own words to accurately describe other scholars’ ideas remains a challenging process for many graduate students, and understandably so. While practicing and improving paraphrasing is guaranteed to level-up your writing, doing so with integrity can and should be an ongoing concern. Come to this workshop to learn more about that foreboding beast "plagiarism," and its lesser known version "patch writing," so that you are better equipped to avoid it in your own work.

Description: Join the Thesis Writing Group to make some serious progress on your thesis! The Thesis Writing Group is modeled after other successful online writing groups that use scheduled time to work on their writing with the (quiet) presence and support of other writers. The Research Commons remains devoted to supporting SFU graduate student researchers, even though we are now working from a distance!

What you can expect

The Thesis Writing Group will be held via Zoom. It will be hosted and moderated by members of the Graduate Writing Facilitator team, who will be available for writing support, along with a Librarian for research support. An Assistant for Theses will also be available for some of the sessions for any questions about using the thesis template, formatting, or the thesis submission process. The sessions will be held on Fridays, 9:00 am – 12 noon for 8 weeks, starting February 5th, 2021 and concluding March 26th, 2021.

The online writing group format

Some of you may already be familiar with or have participated in online writing groups. For both those with and without experience, we encourage you to join us for this unique experience! Like Thesis Boot Camp that some of you may be familiar with, the group will begin each session by briefly checking in and setting goals in small groups before turning to dedicated writing time. Participants can request support from our team through the chat feature, and consultations/discussions will take place in a breakout room. The 3-hour sessions will conclude with the group coming together and discussing any reflections or areas of interest/concern.

Writers will be asked to keep their microphones muted while writing, and the use of webcams is welcome but entirely optional for each participant. 

Registration

Registration is available for all 8-weeks of sessions combined. We ask that registered participants commit to attending each session to the extent that their schedules allow, and that those who would like to join but know in advance that they will not be available to attend one or several sessions to please let us know in advance. Similar to Thesis Boot Camp registration, this is to ensure that we offer ample resources to best support students dedicated to making serious progress on their theses during this time period.

Please register by Tuesday, February 2nd at 4:00pm, after which registrants will be contacted with a confirmation and further instructions.

If you have any questions about the Thesis Writing Group, please contact Robyn Long, Writing Services Coordinator for graduate students, at robyn_long@sfu.ca.

Join SFU Library's Writer in Residence, Mark Winston, for a full-day, hands-on workshop on writing for public audiences.

Have you thought about raising your profile by publishing opinion pieces in major newspapers and magazines, blog posts, or even a trade book, focused on a broad, non-academic audience? Interested in expanding your influence by effectively communicating your research and other activities to wider audiences?

Workshop participants will have the opportunity to communicate their own work through effective, compelling and engaging writing. We’ll work on developing brevity, clarity and impact, gaining confidence and skill in using your unique voice and style to tell your story with greater proficiency.

This all-day workshop will be limited to eight participants, who will work on their own distinctive projects. Format will be hands-on and participatory, focused on clear thinking, succinctness, simplicity, storytelling and bringing key messages front and center, using intensive group feedback, editing and revisions. We’ll also discuss audiences, outlets and the nuts and bolts of publishing a non-academic piece. Participants will leave the workshop with writing they could build on for publication.

This workshop will alternate between online sessions focused on nonfiction writing strategies, offline writing exercises, online feedback and editing, and offline breaks.

Learn more about Mark Winston and the SFU Library Non-Fiction Writer in Residence Program.

This interactive workshop focuses on the literature review and literature search. At this session you will learn:

• conventions of literature reviews,
• search strategies,
• advanced features of research databases,
• and tips to further develop effective and efficient research skills.

Get to the point. Say more in fewer words. Attend this workshop to learn key strategies to revise your writing specifically for concision. Most are surprised to learn how drastically these strategies can reduce one’s word count without having to eliminate content!

Being anxious about academic writing can lead to unhelpful writing habits like avoidance and procrastination. Join us for a discussion on how to make more progress by alleviating writing anxiety!

You might already be aware of “free writing” as an exercise that can aid the drafting process, but does this task ever seem too free to help you produce quality text that you can use in academic writing? Join this workshop to practice some helpful guidelines for free writing. We’ll provide just enough structure so that your “free” writing doesn’t instead simply feel “lost.”

Then we invite you to join us for an evening of thesis-adjacent conversation, commiserating, and camaraderie! Bring your beverage of choice and any snacks you might find scattered around your computer to this informal online (anti)thesis social, where we make time to indulge in our collective stories of writing wins and woes; bumps, bruises, and band-aids; successes, scandals, and odysseys… all the chats we run out of time for during our writing-focused workshops and thesis group time.

Join SFU Library's Writer in Residence, Mark Winston, for a full-day, hands-on workshop on writing for public audiences.

Have you thought about raising your profile by publishing opinion pieces in major newspapers and magazines, blog posts, or even a trade book, focused on a broad, non-academic audience? Interested in expanding your influence by effectively communicating your research and other activities to wider audiences?

Workshop participants will have the opportunity to communicate their own work through effective, compelling and engaging writing. We’ll work on developing brevity, clarity and impact, gaining confidence and skill in using your unique voice and style to tell your story with greater proficiency.

This all-day workshop will be limited to eight participants, who will work on their own distinctive projects. Format will be hands-on and participatory, focused on clear thinking, succinctness, simplicity, storytelling and bringing key messages front and center, using intensive group feedback, editing and revisions. We’ll also discuss audiences, outlets and the nuts and bolts of publishing a non-academic piece. Participants will leave the workshop with writing they could build on for publication.

This workshop will alternate between online sessions focused on nonfiction writing strategies, offline writing exercises, online feedback and editing, and offline breaks.

Learn more about Mark Winston and the SFU Library Non-Fiction Writer in Residence Program.

Creating an effective argument in academic writing is not necessarily an intuitive process. Convincing others of your position requires considering a number of elements like careful use of sources, examining assumptions, and employing clear language that will directly communicate your ideas. Join this workshop to help give your argumentative writing know-how a boost!

Have you ever received feedback that your writing seems “choppy”? Are you having concerns about how to order your ideas or how to transition from one section to the next? This workshop is focused on developing some strategies for producing cohesive academic writing that “flows.”

Join SFU Library's Writer in Residence, Mark Winston, for a full-day, hands-on workshop on writing for public audiences.

Have you thought about raising your profile by publishing opinion pieces in major newspapers and magazines, blog posts, or even a trade book, focused on a broad, non-academic audience? Interested in expanding your influence by effectively communicating your research and other activities to wider audiences?

Workshop participants will have the opportunity to communicate their own work through effective, compelling and engaging writing. We’ll work on developing brevity, clarity and impact, gaining confidence and skill in using your unique voice and style to tell your story with greater proficiency.

This all-day workshop will be limited to eight participants, who will work on their own distinctive projects. Format will be hands-on and participatory, focused on clear thinking, succinctness, simplicity, storytelling and bringing key messages front and center, using intensive group feedback, editing and revisions. We’ll also discuss audiences, outlets and the nuts and bolts of publishing a non-academic piece. Participants will leave the workshop with writing they could build on for publication.

This workshop will alternate between online sessions focused on nonfiction writing strategies, offline writing exercises, online feedback and editing, and offline breaks.

Learn more about Mark Winston and the SFU Library Non-Fiction Writer in Residence Program.