Research Commons: Workshops for graduate students & postdoctoral fellows

The Research Commons is pleased to offer you a range of workshops, developed in the context of SFU Library's Instruction Strategy. You can register for upcoming workshops and search by workshop date in our workshops calendar.  

If you do not see the topic(s) you are interested in and/or would like a specialized workshop for yourself and a group of colleagues, please send a request to research-commons@sfu.ca.

SFU values diversity and is committed to inclusion. If you require any disability-related accommodations in order to fully access and participate in our workshops and/or events, please contact us directly at library-workshops@sfu.ca. All communication will be kept confidential. Please contact us as early as possible as some accommodations will require lead time to arrange (i.e. CART, ASL)

Unaffiliated with SFU but interested in attending a workshop? See Who can register for SFU Library Research Commons workshops.

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Digital Humanities workshops

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English as an Additional Language (EAL) workshops

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Knowledge Mobilization workshops

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Learning workshops

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Research Data Management workshops

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 For assistance with research data management, please contact data-services@sfu.ca.

 Check out our recorded workshops on topics in research data management.

Next semester's workshops will be posted soon.

Research Programming workshops

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Manipulating and Handling Text Data in R

 About 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 

  • Bring your own laptop, with the latest version of R and RStudio installed
  • Familiarity with R and the RStudio environment including an understanding of basic functionality such as object assignment, data structures, and running scripts 
  • Install the latest version of the stringr package by running install.packages("stringr") in R

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Wednesday, March 27, 2024 - 1:00pm to 4:00pm
Burnaby, Bennett Library, Rm 7010, Research Commons

Introduction to Bayesian inference with R

  About the workshop

Computational advances have made it possible to apply Bayesian statistical inference to analyze data in various real-world applications. Bayesian statistical methods show up in many applied fields, including biology, finance, earth sciences, and more. These methods allow us to take existing knowledge about an unknown parameter and update it as new data becomes available. In this way a distribution for population parameters can be constructed which can then be visualized to identify which values are most likely based on our data. Bayesian inference can be used for almost any research question where we already have some information about a parameter of interest.
 
This in-person workshop will give you a brief description of Bayesian statistical methods and introduce the Rstan package, an interface between the R programming language and Stan, a popular tool for creating and estimating models in the Bayesian framework.
 
The topics covered include:
  • Distinction between Bayesian and classical statistical methods, with the pros and cons of each approach.
  • Review of Bayesian statistical method including prior, posterior inference, etc. 
  • Computation methods used for Bayesian estimation (i.e., Markov chain Monte Carlo or MCMC).
  • Writing and estimating Bayesian models using Rstan and Rstanarm.

 Requirements

  • Bring a laptop with the latest versions of R and RStudio installed.
  • Familiarity with R and RStudio
  • Some knowledge of statistics (normal distributions, maximum likelihood estimation, linear regression). A review of these topics can be found in the textbook “Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences” by Jay L. Devore, available at SFU Library.
  • No knowledge of Bayesian estimation is needed; the required topics will be covered in the workshop.

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Saturday, April 6, 2024 - 10:30am to 5:30pm
Burnaby, Bennett Library, Rm 7010, Research Commons

RMarkdown: Learn to Create Webpages, PDF Documents, and Formal Reports in RStudio

About the workshop

This workshop, intended for those who have at least an introductory competence in R, will teach participants how to use RMarkdown. RMarkdown is a flexible filetype available in RStudio that integrates the ability of running R code with the features of word processing software.

Participants will learn how to create interactive webpages, beautifully and professionally formatted PDF documents, and potentially other types of professional documents that truly set them apart from typical Microsoft Word documents. A basic understanding of R coding is required to participate in this course.

The topics covered include:

  • RMarkdown documents
  • Markdown document formatting
  • LaTeX document formatting
  • Integrating customized tables and figures into documents
  • Creating various document types, such as html and PDF documents

Requirements

  • Bring your own laptop, with the latest version of R and RStudio installed
  • Participants should have at least an introductory competence in R and a basic understanding of R coding is required

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Tuesday, April 9, 2024 - 1:00pm to 5:00pm
Burnaby, Bennett Library, Rm 7010, Research Commons

Research Software workshops

 Citation Management

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Citations Made Easy: Introduction to Zotero [Online]

About the workshop

Want to make your research and writing more efficient? Hate the last minute rush of trying to create a correctly formatted bibliography? This introductory 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.

Requirements

In advance of the workshop, please: register for a Zotero account and download and install Zotero 6 and the Zotero Connector. If you have any difficulties doing this, please send an email to citation-managers@sfu.ca. Please note that the Zotero Connector works best with Firefox and Chrome. If you choose to use the Zotero Connector with Safari, please be aware that there are a few known compatibility issues at this time which may prove frustrating. Read more about Safari's compatibility with Zotero.

Resources

Workshop materials are available here

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Thursday, March 21, 2024 - 10:00am to 11:15am
via Zoom (link will be sent to participants 24 hours before the workshop/event begins)

 GIS

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Next semester's workshops will be posted soon.

Web GIS Workshop Series

In the past decade, revolutionary internet technologies have driven Geographic Information System (GIS) to expand far beyond the professional GIS community. Many individuals who lack traditional GIS trainings- engineers, entrepreneurs, journalists, researchers- have been involved in web cartography work. The empowerment is fueled by geospatially enabled technologies such as Global Positional Systems (GPS), the Internet, and user-friendly cartography tools. This workshop series will give you a taste of this new ecosystem, introducing you to a range of concepts, tools, and skills which include how web map is structured, how to create one, how to collaboratively collect field data and populate to a shared web map, and how to combine maps and digital storytelling to communicate your research.

All workshops in this series are designed for beginners- no previous GIS knowledge is required. Attend as many or as few sessions as you like.

Next semester's workshops will be posted soon.

 Python

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 Qualitative Data Analysis

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 R (Software)

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 Consultation appointments in R are available, please email us at data-services@sfu.ca with some details on your specific question about using R. Data anonymization: note that any data needs to be suitably anonymized if working with sensitive subjects before meeting with the Research Programming Peer. 

Introduction to Bayesian inference with R

  About the workshop

Computational advances have made it possible to apply Bayesian statistical inference to analyze data in various real-world applications. Bayesian statistical methods show up in many applied fields, including biology, finance, earth sciences, and more. These methods allow us to take existing knowledge about an unknown parameter and update it as new data becomes available. In this way a distribution for population parameters can be constructed which can then be visualized to identify which values are most likely based on our data. Bayesian inference can be used for almost any research question where we already have some information about a parameter of interest.
 
This in-person workshop will give you a brief description of Bayesian statistical methods and introduce the Rstan package, an interface between the R programming language and Stan, a popular tool for creating and estimating models in the Bayesian framework.
 
The topics covered include:
  • Distinction between Bayesian and classical statistical methods, with the pros and cons of each approach.
  • Review of Bayesian statistical method including prior, posterior inference, etc. 
  • Computation methods used for Bayesian estimation (i.e., Markov chain Monte Carlo or MCMC).
  • Writing and estimating Bayesian models using Rstan and Rstanarm.

 Requirements

  • Bring a laptop with the latest versions of R and RStudio installed.
  • Familiarity with R and RStudio
  • Some knowledge of statistics (normal distributions, maximum likelihood estimation, linear regression). A review of these topics can be found in the textbook “Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences” by Jay L. Devore, available at SFU Library.
  • No knowledge of Bayesian estimation is needed; the required topics will be covered in the workshop.

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Saturday, April 6, 2024 - 10:30am to 5:30pm
Burnaby, Bennett Library, Rm 7010, Research Commons

Manipulating and Handling Text Data in R

 About 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 

  • Bring your own laptop, with the latest version of R and RStudio installed
  • Familiarity with R and the RStudio environment including an understanding of basic functionality such as object assignment, data structures, and running scripts 
  • Install the latest version of the stringr package by running install.packages("stringr") in R

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Wednesday, March 27, 2024 - 1:00pm to 4:00pm
Burnaby, Bennett Library, Rm 7010, Research Commons

RMarkdown: Learn to Create Webpages, PDF Documents, and Formal Reports in RStudio

About the workshop

This workshop, intended for those who have at least an introductory competence in R, will teach participants how to use RMarkdown. RMarkdown is a flexible filetype available in RStudio that integrates the ability of running R code with the features of word processing software.

Participants will learn how to create interactive webpages, beautifully and professionally formatted PDF documents, and potentially other types of professional documents that truly set them apart from typical Microsoft Word documents. A basic understanding of R coding is required to participate in this course.

The topics covered include:

  • RMarkdown documents
  • Markdown document formatting
  • LaTeX document formatting
  • Integrating customized tables and figures into documents
  • Creating various document types, such as html and PDF documents

Requirements

  • Bring your own laptop, with the latest version of R and RStudio installed
  • Participants should have at least an introductory competence in R and a basic understanding of R coding is required

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Tuesday, April 9, 2024 - 1:00pm to 5:00pm
Burnaby, Bennett Library, Rm 7010, Research Commons

 Visual Analytics

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Scholarly Communication workshops

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Next semester's workshops will be posted soon.

Thesis workshops 

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 If you are unable to attend one of our thesis template workshops, check out our online tutorials on using the Thesis Word Template.
  For more information, please email the Thesis Office or book an appointment using the online booking system for a one-on-one consultation.

The Thesis Submission Process [Online]

About the workshop

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.

You will learn:

  1. How to log into the Thesis Registration System (TRS)
  2. What documents are required to upload to the TRS
  3. What “if applicable” documents you need to upload to the TRS
  4. What happens after you have submitted

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.

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Tuesday, March 26, 2024 - 1:00pm to 2:30pm
via Zoom (link will be sent to participants 24 hours before the workshop/event begins)

Thesis Writing Group [Online]

 About Thesis Writing Group

Join Thesis Writing Group to make some serious progress on your thesis (or other academic writing projects) and to develop a sustainable writing practice. Thesis Writing Group is modelled after other successful online writing groups that use scheduled time to work on writing with the (quiet) presence and support of other writers.

What you can expect

Thesis Writing Group is held via Zoom. It is facilitated by members of the Graduate Writing Services team and the Research Commons Librarian, who are available for writing and research support during the weekly sessions. An Assistant for Theses will also be available for some of the sessions for any questions about using the thesis template, formatting, and the thesis submission process. Optional mini workshops on topics such as library research techniques, copyright, and academic publishing will be offered some weeks. For Spring 2024, sessions will be held on Fridays, 9:30 am – 12:30pm for 10 weeks, starting Friday, January 26, 2024 and concluding Friday, April 5, 2024 (no session on Friday March 29, 2024 - Good Friday stat holiday).

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! The group will begin each session by briefly checking in and setting goals before turning to dedicated writing time. Participants can request support from our team through the chat feature, and consultations/discussions will take place in breakout rooms. The 3-hour sessions 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 is for ten weeks

Registration is available for all 10 weeks of sessions combined. We ask that registered participants commit to attending each session to the extent that their schedules allow.

Please register by Thursday, January 25, 2024 before 6:00am in order to receive the Zoom link to join.

If you have any questions about Thesis Writing Group, please contact Julie Jones, Research Commons Librarian, at jsj7@sfu.ca

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Friday, January 26, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, February 2, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, February 9, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, February 16, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, February 23, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, March 1, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, March 8, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, March 15, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, March 22, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, April 5, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
via Zoom (link will be sent to participants 24 hours before the workshop/event begins)

Writing workshops

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Creative Flow | Plan Your Nonfiction Project in Three Phases

About the workshop

Embarking on a nonfiction project from scratch can indeed feel like a formidable endeavor. This presentation aims to provide you with a refined and methodical approach to launch your project while maintaining a sense of personal connection to your work. It offers a carefully curated series of reflective writing prompts, thoughtfully organized into three distinct phases of the writing process: the exploratory phase, the initial drafting stage, and the meticulous revision stage.

This event is part of SFU Library's series of activities with our Non-Fiction Writer in Residence, Chelene Knight! Learn more about the Non-Fiction Writer in Residence events

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Thursday, March 21, 2024 - 11:00am to 12:00pm
via Zoom (link will be sent to participants 24 hours before the workshop/event begins)

Thesis Writing Group [Online]

 About Thesis Writing Group

Join Thesis Writing Group to make some serious progress on your thesis (or other academic writing projects) and to develop a sustainable writing practice. Thesis Writing Group is modelled after other successful online writing groups that use scheduled time to work on writing with the (quiet) presence and support of other writers.

What you can expect

Thesis Writing Group is held via Zoom. It is facilitated by members of the Graduate Writing Services team and the Research Commons Librarian, who are available for writing and research support during the weekly sessions. An Assistant for Theses will also be available for some of the sessions for any questions about using the thesis template, formatting, and the thesis submission process. Optional mini workshops on topics such as library research techniques, copyright, and academic publishing will be offered some weeks. For Spring 2024, sessions will be held on Fridays, 9:30 am – 12:30pm for 10 weeks, starting Friday, January 26, 2024 and concluding Friday, April 5, 2024 (no session on Friday March 29, 2024 - Good Friday stat holiday).

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! The group will begin each session by briefly checking in and setting goals before turning to dedicated writing time. Participants can request support from our team through the chat feature, and consultations/discussions will take place in breakout rooms. The 3-hour sessions 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 is for ten weeks

Registration is available for all 10 weeks of sessions combined. We ask that registered participants commit to attending each session to the extent that their schedules allow.

Please register by Thursday, January 25, 2024 before 6:00am in order to receive the Zoom link to join.

If you have any questions about Thesis Writing Group, please contact Julie Jones, Research Commons Librarian, at jsj7@sfu.ca

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Friday, January 26, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, February 2, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, February 9, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, February 16, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, February 23, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, March 1, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, March 8, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, March 15, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, March 22, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Friday, April 5, 2024 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
via Zoom (link will be sent to participants 24 hours before the workshop/event begins)

Your Opinion Matters | Lived Experience as Expertise

About the workshop

Prioritize, value, and amplify your own writerly voice. This lecture-based session will inspire you to use your personal experience as expertise in everything you write. 

This event is part of SFU Library's series of activities with our Non-Fiction Writer in Residence, Chelene Knight! Learn more about the Non-Fiction Writer in Residence events

Register for upcoming workshops

DatesLocation
Monday, April 8, 2024 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm
via Zoom (link will be sent to participants 24 hours before the workshop/event begins)