Computational analysis, also known as distant reading, provides access to information or insights about a text that would be nearly impossible to gather using methods of close reading and “manual” synthesis. This workshop is based on Matthew Jockers’ book “Text Analysis with R for Students of Literature”. We will provide an introduction to computational text analysis using the programming language R and look at 1-2 analysis techniques based on word frequency. 

This workshop is for beginners.

Software/Technical Requirements:

• a computer will be needed and participants should download and install R (free) at https://cran.rstudio.com/ and R Studio (free) at https://rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/

• computer with access to the internet via an up-to-date browser

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, or these two story maps created by SFU researchers, both of which serve as a compelling, public-facing communication venue for the research projects:

• Covid-19 Risks in British Columbia’s Neighbourhoods: Mapping Risks & Vulnerability Across the Province and
• Room to Move: Approaches to Covid-19 street reallocations in four Canadian cities

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.

• 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.

Collect. Describe. Store. Backup. Preserve. Share.

Learn how to draft a plan to manage your research data and ensure its openness over time. The focus of this workshop will be learning about best practices for data storage, organization, preservation, and sharing as well as adhering to funding and publishing requirements. Attendees will be shown exemplars of data management plans and introduced to the DMP Assistant, an online tool for creating data management plans.

• 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.

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.

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 

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.

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.

What is Google Earth Engine?

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 loosely follow the material at https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/tutorials/ttt. Tentative schedule:

Day 1

• GEE overview
• Client vs Server operations
• Accessing and viewing satellite images
• Band math
• Image reducers

Day 2

• Image collections
• Functions
• Map functions
• Collection reducers

Day 3

• Vectors
• Cloudmasks
• 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 some coding is required. Step-by-step tutorials will be sent via email to participants the week before class.

1. Register in advance for free GEE account at https://earthengine.google.com/signup
2. Clone class repository into your account (more info in email)
3. Complete Javascript 101 module prior to first day of class (15 - 30 minutes, more info in email)

Software

Google Earth Engine is run in the cloud, so no software downloads are necessary. Participants only need Google Chrome web browser and a stable internet connection. 

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, or these two story maps created by SFU researchers, both of which serve as a compelling, public-facing communication venue for the research projects:

• Covid-19 Risks in British Columbia’s Neighbourhoods: Mapping Risks & Vulnerability Across the Province and
• Room to Move: Approaches to Covid-19 street reallocations in four Canadian cities

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.

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, or these two story maps created by SFU researchers, both of which serve as a compelling, public-facing communication venue for the research projects:

• Covid-19 Risks in British Columbia’s Neighbourhoods: Mapping Risks & Vulnerability Across the Province and
• Room to Move: Approaches to Covid-19 street reallocations in four Canadian cities

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.

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.

Are you interested in social media data analysis? In this workshop, we will explore NVivo’s capacity to collect and analyze various social media using the Chrome plug-in nCapture.

Requirements:

• This workshop assumes that you already have some familiarity with NVivo and/or will have taken the "Introduction to NVivo" workshop.
• 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.
• We will be using the Windows (PC) operating system and the interface is very different from the Mac operating system

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.

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 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.

Computational analysis, also known as distant reading, provides access to information or insights about a text that would be nearly impossible to gather using methods of close reading and “manual” synthesis. This workshop is based on Matthew Jockers’ book “Text Analysis with R for Students of Literature”. We will provide an introduction to computational text analysis using the programming language R and look at 1-2 analysis techniques based on word frequency. 

This workshop is for beginners.

Software/Technical Requirements:

• a computer will be needed and participants should download and install R (free) at https://cran.rstudio.com/ and R Studio (free) at https://rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/

• computer with access to the internet via an up-to-date browser

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 

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?

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

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 May 28th, 2021 and concluding July 16th, 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 Wednesday, May 26th 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.

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 May 28th, 2021 and concluding July 16th, 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 Wednesday, May 26th 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.