General Information

Research Software Practices in the Social Sciences project, created by the Software Sustainability Institute and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council , seeks to enhance the understanding of software's role in social sciences research through a variety of outreach activities. For the 2025 Spring semester we aim to bring together experts who can share their insights and experiences, fostering a community of researchers focused on sustainable, responsible, and effective software practices.

Data Carpentry develops and teaches workshops on the fundamental data skills needed to conduct research. Its target audience is researchers who have little to no prior computational experience, and its lessons are domain specific, building on learners' existing knowledge to enable them to quickly apply skills learned to their own research. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Good Enough Practices for Scientific Computing".

Who: The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.

Where: This training will take place online. The instructors will provide you with the information you will need to connect to this meeting.

When: 24-25 February 2025; 9:30 am - 2:30 pm GMT Add to your Google Calendar.

Requirements: Participants must have access to a computer with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a specific software installed (listed below) and the gapminder dataset downloaded.

Accessibility: We are dedicated to providing a positive and accessible learning environment for all. If you have questions or need assistance with the accommodation form please email us.

Glosario is a multilingual glossary for computing and data science terms. The glossary helps learners attend workshops and use our lessons to make sense of computational and programming jargon written in English by offering it in their native language.

Contact: Please email andrzej.romaniuk@ed.ac.uk for more information.

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Code of Conduct

Everyone who participates in Software Sustainability Institute activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.

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Collaborative Notes

We will use this collaborative document for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.

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Surveys

We would appreciate your feedback after the workshop.

Post-workshop Survey

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Schedule

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Setup

To participate in a Data Carpentry workshop, you will need access to software as described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.

We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.

Install the videoconferencing client

If you haven't used Zoom before, go to the official website to download and install the Zoom client for your computer.

Set up your workspace

Like other Carpentries workshops, you will be learning by "coding along" with the Instructors. To do this, you will need to have both the window for the tool you will be learning about (a terminal, RStudio, your web browser, etc..) and the window for the Zoom video conference client open. In order to see both at once, we recommend using one of the following set up options:

• Two monitors: If you have two monitors, plan to have the tool you are learning up on one monitor and the video conferencing software on the other.
• Two devices: If you don't have two monitors, do you have another device (tablet, smartphone) with a medium to large sized screen? If so, try using the smaller device as your video conference connection and your larger device (laptop or desktop) to follow along with the tool you will be learning about.
• Divide your screen: If you only have one device and one screen, practice having two windows (the video conference program and one of the tools you will be using at the workshop) open together. How can you best fit both on your screen? Will it work better for you to toggle between them using a keyboard shortcut? Try it out in advance to decide what will work best for you.

This blog post includes detailed information on how to set up your screen to follow along during the workshop.

The setup instructions for the Data Carpentry workshop with Python can be found at the Carpentries official troubleshooting site for software installation.