Time/Location

Instructor

Course Website

Course materials will be posted at the course blog: https://dshizuka.github.io/RCourse/

Course Goals

Required Materials

How the Course Works

Evaluation

Students will be evaluated based on 4 criteria. (1) Participation [15 points], (2) Presentations [15 points], (3) Take-home assignments [20 points], (4) Project Proposal & Progress Reports [20 points], (5) Independent Project Final Products [30 points].

Here are the basic expectations for each of the above categories:

  1. Participation: Students are expected to attend in-person sessions, but accommodations will be made for illness (including illness of dependents), conflicts with research or teaching needs (e.g., field research trip), etc. Students are asked to notify the instructor of upcoming conflicts ahead of time. Conflicts that would require the student to miss more than 4 sessions over the course of the semester should be discussed with the instructor at the beginning of the semester.

  2. Presentations: Three times during the semester, we will have project presentation sessions. In the first session near the beginning of the semester, each student will present a brief overview of their research theme. This can be very broad description of the theme or a detailed account of a specific project. In the second session in the middle of the semester, students will present a ‘progress report’–a description of the project that they settled on, and where they are on the project. In the third session, the students will present their final products.

  3. Take-home assignments: There will be take-home assignments over the course of the semester, which are designed to guide you through some independent exploration of material covered in lecture, and to prepare you towards the beginning of your independent project. These sill be posted via Canvas. You will have 5 or 7 days to complete the assignment.

  4. Project Proposal & Progress Reports: The student will develop a project proposal in two steps: submission of an initial project idea, and submission of a 2-page project proposal that includes objectives and description of the dataset (i.e., how it was collected). During the last third of the semester, students will submit progress reports every 2 weeks.

  5. Independent Project Final Products: At the end of the semester, students will submit a final report (4-5 pages), the data file, and the R script(s).

Independent Project

You will spend several weeks during the course conducting independent projects. We will have regular class during this time, but I will be available to help you with your R codes. This is an opportunity for you to work on something new that will further your research goals. I will leave the format fairly open, but here are some suggestions:

  1. Conduct new analyses of your own data

  2. Re-create models and/or figures from a publication in your field (I recommend this approach—it really helps you understand concepts at a new level).

  3. Conduct meta-analyses or re-analysis of publically available data.

You will submit a brief plan (< 2 pages) of your project during the 8th week of the course. However, you can start your project earlier than that. You will submit a final report, along with the dataset and R scripts needed to reproduce the results.

Students with disabilities

Students with disabilities are encouraged to contact the instructor for a confidential discussion of their individual needs for academic accommodation. It is the policy of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to provide flexible and individualized accommodation to students with documented disabilities that may affect their ability to fully participate in course activities or to meet course requirements. To receive accommodation services, students must be registered with the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) office, 132 Canfield Administration, 472-3787 voice or TTY.


Tentative course schedule (subject to change!)


Before the Course

Please do the following things before we meet for the first class.

  1. Download and Install R and RStudio Desktop
    Go to https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/ and follow directions for downloading and installing R and RStudio If you already have R, upgrade to the latest version. It will make things easier to have everyone on the same version.

  2. Get a GitHub account: Go to https://github.com/ and create an account. Send me an email with your account name and email so I can add you to the class “GitHub Organization”.