The Learning Commons hosts a variety of workshops and programs designed to support and inspire you on your learning, research, and creative journeys. Led by Learning Commons’ partners, sessions are scheduled throughout the semester. See below for our current offerings. If you’d like to suggest a workshop topic that’s not listed here, please send a note to: learningcommons@miami.edu.
Fall 2019
The Data Management Challenge: Wrangling Data in the Research Environment
Date: Friday August 30, 10–11:30 a.m.
Place: Flex Program Space B – Learning Commons
This is an introduction to topics in research data management designed to foster skills and encourage data management best practices for efficiency, compliance and security in the research environment. This is a discipline agnostic seminar. Specific learning goals include the identification of best practices for: file naming conventions, file system organization, data security, data privacy, backup strategies, data sharing, data documentation, and data publication. These topics introduce practical behaviors to ease the digital research process.
This workshop is also being held at:
• Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science Library
Friday, September 6, 10-11:30 a.m.
• Louis Calder Memorial Library, First Floor Collaboratory.
Friday, September 13, 10–11:30 a.m.
Camner Center for Academic Resources Workshop: Time Management & Organization (includes Notetaking)
Date: Wednesday, September 18, 2-3 p.m.
Place: Flex Program Space B – Learning Commons
The Camner Center workshops are designed to instruct students on specific academic skills and strategies to enhance the academic performance.
Introduction to SPSS
Date: Wednesday, September 18, 3 – 4:30 p.m.
Place: Digital Scholars’ Lab, Learning Commons
Designed for new SPSS users. It provides an introduction to the SPSS software program, including its software environment, importing data, descriptive -statistics, transforming variables, selecting and splitting data, and visualization.
Intermediate SPSS
Date: Wednesday, September 25, 3 – 4:30 p.m.
Place: Digital Scholars’ Lab, Learning Commons
Designed for intermediate SPSS users. It covers common statistical methods in SPSS such as means comparisons, ANOVA, linear regression, and logistic regression models.
SAS for Data Analysis
Date: Wednesday, October 2, 3 – 4:30 p.m.
Place: Digital Scholars’ Lab, Learning Commons
Designed for both new and intermediate SAS users. It provides an overview of the SAS software program, including its programming language, software environment, importing data, descriptive statistics, transforming variables, selecting and splitting data, exploratory tests, regression models, and visualization.
Camner Center for Academic Resources Workshop: Learning and Memory
Date: Tuesday, October 8, 1-2 p.m.
Place: Flex Program Space B – Learning Commons
The Camner Center workshops are designed to instruct students on specific academic skills and strategies to enhance the academic performance.
Data Management and Research Design
Date: Wednesday October 9, 10–11:30 a.m.
Place: Flex Program Space B – Learning Commons
This is the first in a series of short seminars that explore topics in research data management (see intro above and other DM seminars in this list). This is a discipline agnostic seminar. Specific learning goals include to: Understand federal policy context for data management and sharing, explain the data lifecycle, critically evaluate existing Data Management Plans (DMPs), and be able to identify key elements in a DMP. As a product of the seminar/workshop attendees will outline a data management plan (DMP) for their research.
Introduction to ArcGIS Online
Date: Thursday, October 10, 2-4 p.m.
Place: Digital Scholars’ Lab, Learning Commons
This workshop will introduce you to ArcGIS Online, the ESRI’s cloud-based mapping and analysis platform. You will learn how to create interactive maps, how to add, manage and share content, and how to perform basic spatial analysis procedures with your data. Participants will also learn how to create and share basic web apps. It is strongly recommended that participants register in advance for them to receive their ArcGIS Online credentials before the session starts.
File Formats and System Organization for Research
Date: Wednesday October 22, 10–11:30 a.m.
Place: Flex Program Space B – Learning Commons
This is the second in a series of short seminars that explore topics in research data management (see intro above and other DM seminars in this list). This is a discipline agnostic seminar. Specific learning goals include to: Understand file format choices and their implications for data sharing, data publication, and data re-use, identify best practices for file system organization, and identify best practices for file naming conventions. As a product of the seminar/workshop attendees will select file formats, choose a file naming convention, and design a file system architecture for their research.
Introduction to R/RStudio
Date: Wednesday, October 23, 3 – 4:30 p.m.
Place: Digital Scholars’ Lab, Learning Commons
Introduction to using the software program R for visualization. Attendees will learn how to create a variety of charts, graphs, and maps. Prior experience with R required–this workshop assumes knowledge of the R language and environment.
Intermediate R/RStudio
Date: Wednesday, October 30, 3 – 4:30 p.m.
Place: Digital Scholars’ Lab, Learning Commons
Designed for intermediate R and R Studio users. It covers common statistical methods in R such as means comparisons, ANOVA, linear regression, and basic visualization.
Writing Center Workshop: Writing the Literature Review
Date: Thursday, October 31, 12-1 p.m.
Place: Flex Program Space B – Learning Commons
Writing a literature review sounds easy, but it’s one of the hardest tasks for students to learn in graduate school. This workshop is designed to help graduate students understand the expectations of the literature review. We will also provide some tips and strategies you can use to meet, or even exceed, expectations.
Research Data Description and Documentation
Date: Wednesday November 6, 10–11:30 a.m.
Place: Flex Program Space B – Learning Commons
This is the third in a series of short seminars that explore topics in research data management (see intro above and other DM seminars in this list). This is a discipline agnostic seminar. Specific learning goals include to: Identify disciplinary metadata standards (if they exist), describe discipline agnostic metadata standards, and understand how metadata facilitates discovery, sharing and access to data resources. As a product of the seminar/workshop attendees will create metadata for a selected subset of the data from their research.
Data Visualization with Tableau
Date: Wednesday, November 6, 3 – 4:30 p.m.
Place: Digital Scholars’ Lab, Learning Commons
Introduction to using the software program Tableau for data visualization. It covers making common graphs and tables, importing data, making sheets and dashboards, and exporting images.
Camner Center for Academic Resources Workshop: Test-Taking Strategies (includes Final Exam Prep)
Date: Thursday, November 7, 11 a.m.-12 p.m.
Place: Flex Program Space B – Learning Commons
The Camner Center workshops are designed to instruct students on specific academic skills and strategies to enhance the academic performance.
Writing Center Workshop: Revise! Revise! Revise!
Date: Thursday, November 7, 7-8 p.m.
Place: Flex Program Space B – Learning Commons
Do you have great ideas for your papers, but then have trouble turning them into great papers? The key might be in your revision process. This workshop is designed to help writers at any stage use revision to improve their writing and create better work.
Research Data Publication: Repositories and Sharing
Date: Wednesday November 19, 10–11:30 a.m.
Place: Flex Program Space B – Learning Commons
This is the fourth in a series of short seminars that explore topics in research data management (see intro above and other DM seminars in this list). This is a discipline agnostic seminar. Specific learning goals include to: Identify discipline specific repositories, understand data ownership in the context of research institutions, be able to decode repository requirements to publish data, and create correct citations for referencing data in publications. As a product of the seminar/workshop attendees will create a deposit package from a selected subset of the data from their research for publication in a data repository.
Data Visualization with R/RStudio
Date: Wednesday, November 20, 3 – 4:30 p.m.
Place: Digital Scholars’ Lab, Learning Commons
Introduction to using the software program R for visualization. Prior experience with R required—this workshop assumes knowledge of the R language and environment.