We're always learning, and our skill development offer doesn't end with our training programme: as well as collaborating with partners to support other learning events, we create online resources such as our self-guided pathways, offer one-to-one clinics and bursaries and support sandpits and hacks. This year we've also been taking time to reflect on our own teaching and training practice, as part of our local digital research community.
In January, we participated in the Pair Programming Winter School, where we reflected on the advantages and limitations of using server-based tools for teaching coding. In February, we organised a round table at the University of Edinburgh's Digital Research Conference, further exploring the theme of empowering non-coders. These discussions have been instrumental in shaping our contributions to the forthcoming book Teaching Programming Across Disciplines, where our chapters focus on developing a coding mindset, crafting teaching materials in multiple languages, creating strategies for online teaching, fostering interdisciplinarity through our Training Programme and overcoming technological barriers.
This year, we continued to support the challenge-based Students as Change Agents (SACHA) programme, which brings together students from different subjects to solve real-world problems with a wider social, environmental, or economic impact. We mentored the SACHA Data Coaches as they provided data support and computational methods development for students.
The Data Lab Academy’s (TDLA) Innovation Week is a three-day programme where Data Science students across Scotland are invited to participate in real-world complex challenges whilst learning about the required tools and perspectives for successful co-design. The CDCS data coach compiled and organised data from industry-based partners into a user-friendly data playground for the attendees, as well as providing technical and methodological support.
We delivered a deep dive workshop to support PhDs from the School of History, Classics & Archaeology in navigating digital research. During the event, we provided the attendees with an overview of the digital and computational methods that are most relevant to historical and archaeological research. We also demonstrated the practical application of computational tools to analysing historical documents.
This year, we conducted our first bespoke workshop for an EFI partner, Research Data Scotland. The workshop centred on enhancing collaborative workflows using the Git version control system, in conjunction with the widely-used online platform GitHub and the GitHub Desktop application. Through hands-on examples, participants learned how to leverage the GitHub Desktop app for streamlined version control and collaboration. Additionally, we explored GitHub's interface to maximise the benefits of accessing and utilising openly shared data, code, scripts and documents effectively.
EFI builds collaborative partnerships within key local sectors, including festivals and tourism. To support this, we held a research sandpit focused on data shared by festival partners and gathered from open sources. Researchers explored what insights they could draw from ticketing data, memberships and event listings. A number of participants have subsequently developed their ideas into small projects.
Since not everyone learns in the same way or has the same amount of time available, we provide training in forms that are both diverse and flexible. This also increases the reusability and accessibility of our materials, ensuring that they can reach a wide range of learners. To this end, we have identified a selection of training materials that can form self-contained online resources, and we have already published the first three in this format.
A practical introduction to converting statistical analyses from SPSS to R, demonstrating how to perform common tasks—from data manipulation and visualisation to statistical testing and APA-style reporting—within R.
An overview of how to build interactive web applications in R using Shiny, emphasising how such apps enable users to explore data and analysis processes dynamically rather than passively.
An introduction to the principles of Bayesian statistics, highlighting how the framework differs from frequentist approaches by asking, “What is the probability of different hypotheses, given the data and our prior beliefs about the world?”
This year, we helped Dr Sam Leggett attend a short course in Radiocarbon Dating and Bayesian Chronological Analysis at the University of Oxford.
We sent Mukti Ratna Dewi to the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis - 2N Geospatial Data and Spatial Analysis.
This year, we designed challenge-led skills training for EFI students. "Digital and Computational Methods for Research" offered an overview of the principal challenges and opportunities in digital research, introduced key methods and techniques and provided a practical demonstration using historical data. The second event, the "Text Analysis and the Humanities" workshop, introduced the fundamental concepts of computational text analysis. Participants explored material and code to analyse the Scottish Statistical Accounts, thereby observing computational methods in practice.
