Many humanities researchers have some form of geographical information included in their research, such as objects, images, or texts from or about a particular place; narratives about a person’s movement or a place’s change over time; or information about networks of people or organizations. Whether places and spaces are at the heart of your research or are a part of it, mapping can help answer research questions and generate new ones by visualizing your data in new ways. It can help tell a story about place or space. This two-part workshop series will help humanities researchers map their place-based research with ArcGIS.

Exploring the spatial elements of your research
The first workshop will cover the nuts and bolts of getting started mapping with ArcGIS. We will discuss how to extract data from your research, get it ready for analysis, and upload it into ArcGIS.

Mapping the spatial elements of your research
The second workshop will cover spatial analysis - the potential applications of your geographic information. We will demonstrate the analytic functions included in ArcGIS and discuss how to create context for your spatial data. We will also introduce Story Maps, an app that helps turn place-based information into narratives with a combination of maps, images, and text. Note: for this workshop, we will assume that you have already attended the first workshop or are comfortable with the material covered there.

Many humanities researchers have some form of geographical information included in their research, such as objects, images, or texts from or about a particular place; narratives about a person’s movement or a place’s change over time; or information about networks of people or organizations. Whether places and spaces are at the heart of your research or are a part of it, mapping can help answer research questions and generate new ones by visualizing your data in new ways. It can help tell a story about place or space. This two-part workshop series will help humanities researchers map their place-based research with ArcGIS.

Exploring the spatial elements of your research
The first workshop will cover the nuts and bolts of getting started mapping with ArcGIS. We will discuss how to extract data from your research, get it ready for analysis, and upload it into ArcGIS.

Mapping the spatial elements of your research
The second workshop will cover spatial analysis - the potential applications of your geographic information. We will demonstrate the analytic functions included in ArcGIS and discuss how to create context for your spatial data. We will also introduce Story Maps, an app that helps turn place-based information into narratives with a combination of maps, images, and text. Note: for this workshop, we will assume that you have already attended the first workshop or are comfortable with the material covered there.

GitHub is a website and hosting service that is celebrated in tech circles. Did you know that it's useful for non-programmers? In this hands-on workshop, we'll be covering the fundamentals of GitHub including repositories, version control, project management, wikis, and Gist. The content is designed for novice users; all learners are welcome. Come to discover how this digital tool can improve collaboration in your research projects.  To participate in this workshop, you must bring a laptop (preferred) or a tablet. You may be contacted with software installation instructions prior to the event.

Many humanities researchers have some form of geographical information included in their research, such as objects, images, or texts from or about a particular place; narratives about a person’s movement or a place’s change over time; or information about networks of people or organizations. Whether places and spaces are at the heart of your research or are a part of it, mapping can help answer research questions and generate new ones by visualizing your data in new ways. It can help tell a story about place or space. This two-part workshop series will help humanities researchers map their place-based research with ArcGIS.

Exploring the spatial elements of your research
The first workshop will cover the nuts and bolts of getting started mapping with ArcGIS. We will discuss how to extract data from your research, get it ready for analysis, and upload it into ArcGIS.

Mapping the spatial elements of your research
The second workshop will cover spatial analysis - the potential applications of your geographic information. We will demonstrate the analytic functions included in ArcGIS and discuss how to create context for your spatial data. We will also introduce Story Maps, an app that helps turn place-based information into narratives with a combination of maps, images, and text. Note: for this workshop, we will assume that you have already attended the first workshop or are comfortable with the material covered there.

Many humanities researchers have some form of geographical information included in their research, such as objects, images, or texts from or about a particular place; narratives about a person’s movement or a place’s change over time; or information about networks of people or organizations. Whether places and spaces are at the heart of your research or are a part of it, mapping can help answer research questions and generate new ones by visualizing your data in new ways. It can help tell a story about place or space. This two-part workshop series will help humanities researchers map their place-based research with ArcGIS.

Exploring the spatial elements of your research
The first workshop will cover the nuts and bolts of getting started mapping with ArcGIS. We will discuss how to extract data from your research, get it ready for analysis, and upload it into ArcGIS.

Mapping the spatial elements of your research
The second workshop will cover spatial analysis - the potential applications of your geographic information. We will demonstrate the analytic functions included in ArcGIS and discuss how to create context for your spatial data. We will also introduce Story Maps, an app that helps turn place-based information into narratives with a combination of maps, images, and text. Note: for this workshop, we will assume that you have already attended the first workshop or are comfortable with the material covered there.

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 course? At the end of this, 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 or who have taken the Nuts and Bolts of NVivo workshop. For more information about NVivo at SFU, please visit NVivo Software for Research Analysis.

Participants should also have some familiarity with citation management software (Zotero, Mendeley, Refworks, EndNote, etc). Zotero will be used during this workshop.

This 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 to bring their own laptops, with R and RStudio installed prior to attending the workshop.

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.

Prerequisites: Functional knowledge of commonly used base R commands (for an overview see https://www.rstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/base-r.pdf).

Note: Workshop participants will need to bring their own laptops, with R and RStudio installed prior to attending 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.

Note: Workshop participants will need to bring their own laptops, with R and RStudio installed prior to attending the workshop.

Your poster speaks for you! Learn how to capture your audience's attention, communicate the key aspects of your research and persuade your intended audience to reach out to you.

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!

Trying to shape your academic writing style takes time and effort, but it doesn’t happen in a void. Better writing is supported by better reading. Join us today to work on reading for style and on transferring deconstruction skills to constructing your own voice while improving clarity and communication.

Lay language is needed in order to convey technical and advanced ideas in ways that are more effective than “dumbing it down”. You may be preparing a grant or fellowship proposal, writing for online purposes or fine tuning your “job talk”— all of which require you to translate your work and research to persons outside of your core field of study.

Our professors’ feedback can be one of the most valuable tools we receive as graduate students, leading to deeply meaningful change in our thinking and writing – if we can figure out what to do with it! Don’t let those teachable moments go to waste. Let’s talk about how we can improve incorporating (and accepting) others’ feedback into our writing process.

In this workshop, Tim Mossman will share his 20-minute PhD thesis presentation with Powerpoint.  Tim will first give his presentation (identity development of immigrant students) and then explain the techniques he used to design and deliver his presentation.  

Attendees will learn how to:

• choose a simple, attractive design,
• incorporate transitions, animations, and colorful images,
• use speaking notes effectively,
• use spoken signal phrases to transition between slides,
• and increase audience comprehension by speaking in message units.

Tim Mossman is the EAL Services Coordinator in the Student Learning Commons and former student in the Languages, Cultures, and Literacies program in the Faculty of Education.

Note:
Please note that this workshop is based on a PhD defence presentation of a qualitative research project in the Faculty of Education. Students should check with their own departments/disciplines regarding guidelines for thesis presentation formats first.

Thesis reBoot is a day-long thesis writing retreat designed for graduate students who have already participated in Thesis Boot Camp.  

Along with a comfortable, quiet working environment, writing and research support, and snacks and lunches, this day-long writing retreat offers students community and motivation in that final push towards the completion of their dissertation or thesis.

More information can be found on the Thesis reBoot page.

Drowning in words? We'll review how to recognize and cut wordiness and redundancy. By applying these strategies, you'll see immediate improvements in sentence clarity.

Trying to shape your academic writing style takes time and effort, but it doesn’t happen in a void. Better writing is supported by better reading. Join us today to work on reading for style and on transferring deconstruction skills to constructing your own voice while improving clarity and communication.

Academic writing can be more than boring readers and emulating stuffy styles. In fact, expressing complex ideas in your own voice can be one of the best ways to make your work stand out. Join us for a conversation on conformity, creativity, and originality and begin your journey toward discovering your academic voice.

Presenting in graduate school, often in front of an academic audience, can be a very rewarding, but a somewhat anxiety-provoking experience. This interactive workshop will provide practical strategies to plan, organize, and structure a professional presentation that will increase your confidence and have you delivering an engaging presentation. You’ll learn the elements that contribute to an effective presentation and how to facilitate and field questions from your audience.

Thesis reBoot is a day-long thesis writing retreat designed for graduate students who have already participated in Thesis Boot Camp.  

Along with a comfortable, quiet working environment, writing and research support, and snacks and lunches, this day-long writing retreat offers students community and motivation in that final push towards the completion of their dissertation or thesis.

More information can be found on the Thesis reBoot page.

This demonstration introduces you to the Thesis Submission process and the Thesis Template. It will begin with an introduction to required copyright permissions from the Copyright Office at SFU, followed by a review of the overall submission process (including deadlines and supporting documentation). Additionally, SFU Library's research data specialists will give instruction on how to preserve and, if appropriate, share research data for future uses.

The technical part of the workshop will follow, where you will be walked through the resources on the website and the functionality of the thesis template.

Students are encouraged to bring their own computer and thesis document(s) to work along with the facilitator during the workshop.

Learn how to:

• request copyright permissions
• write in the MS Word template-based file
• format your text using styles
• bring text in from other documents
• insert figures, images, and auto-numbered captions
• generate the Table of Contents, List of Tables, List of Figures, etc.

If you’ve begun writing, send your document to theses@sfu.ca in advance of the workshop; one might be used in demonstrating the Library’s thesis template. After the session, the formatted document will be returned in which the student can continue his/her work.