Free “Data Carpentry” Workshops at University of Baltimore

The Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance along with the Applied Information Technology and Information Systems and Decision Science departments at the University of Baltimore is hosting a free series of “Data Carpentry” workshops (see details below) for any interested UBalt students, alumni, faculty and staff. If space is available, these workshops will be open to other community members.

This event is an example-driven six-day workshop on basic computing skills. Short tutorials alternate with hands-on practical exercises, and participants are encouraged both to help one another, and to try applying what they have learned to their own research problems during and between sessions. Participants should bring their own laptop to work on. This should be a "real" laptop - not a Chromebook, tablet, etc. You should also be sure to have admin privileges on this computer.

Visit https://datacarpentry.org/ to learn more about Data Carpentry.

This event runs January 11-13 & 18-20 , from 5:00 pm-8:30pm each day.

For more information about this workshop, see https://datacarpentry.org/lessons/#ecology-workshop

Participants are asked to complete our pre- and post- workshop survey to help us understand how to serve you.

• What: Data Carpentry Workshops (Online/Virtual via Zoom)
• When: 6 Sessions on Tuesday – Thursday, January 11-13 and Jan 18-20, 2022
• Time: 5:00 – 8:30PM each session (20 hours)
• Who: Max of 20 participants. Anyone interested in learning about data science techniques for social good
• Prerequistes: None. Learners may have little to no prior computational experience. The instructors put a priority on creating a friendly environment to empower researchers and enable data-driven discovery. Even those with some experience will benefit, as the goal is to teach not only how to do analyses, but how to manage the process to make it as automated and reproducible as possible.

You must commit to attending all 20 hours to sign up for these workshops. Don’t take a spot and not show up! Space is limited and it will likely fill quickly. All workshops are free to attend. This opportunity is made possible as the University of Baltimore is part of the 2021 DataUp Cohort. DataUp is a program of the South Big Data Hub that enables researchers and educators better understand and address how to prepare institutions for teaching data science in order to prepare students for future data-intensive and data-enabled environments.

About the Data Carpentry Workshops:

To augment the curriculum for University of Baltimore community members, the workshops will focus on the following:

Data Carpentry (Ecology): This workshop uses a tabular ecology dataset from the Portal Project Teaching Database and teaches data cleaning, management, analysis, and visualization. There are no pre-requisites, and the materials assume no prior knowledge about the tools. We use a single dataset throughout the workshop to model the data management and analysis workflow that a researcher would use.

Data Carpentry (Geospatial - Introduction to Geospatial Concepts): The goal of this lesson is to provide an introduction to core geospatial data concepts. It is intended for learners who have no prior experience working with geospatial data and covers the following topics:

• Introduction to raster and vector data format and attributes
• Examples of data types commonly stored in raster vs vector format
• Overview of commonly used programs and applications for working with geospatial data

The Carpentries is a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives. They teach skills that are immediately useful for researchers, using lessons and datasets that allow researchers to quickly apply what they have learned to their own work. I am really excited about using the Data Carpentry curriculum here to help our students become more efficient in their research.

Questions? Feel free to reach out to any of the faculty leads below.

We hope to see you at the workshops!

• Seema Iyer, Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance/Real Estate and Economic Development siyer@ubalt.edu
• Giovanni Vincenti, Applied Information Technology gvincenti@ubalt.edu
• Anil Aggarwal, Information Systems and Decision Science aaggarwal@ubalt.edu

This workshop is part of the South Big Data Hub’s 2021 DataUp Program. The South Hub serves 16 states and the District of Columbia—from Texas to Delaware—with more than 1300 members. The South Hub builds the necessary bridges and acts as a community convener, collaboration hub, and catalyst for data science innovation, through education, funding support, and collective action.

DataUp is a flagship program of the South Big Data Hub and was created to equip liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and minority-serving institutions with the tools to teach and engage with data science on campus. Faculty teams are a part of a year-long cohort and are provided hands-on training workshops to build data science capacity through dedicated on-campus training, train-the-trainers workshops, and a community of other institutios. This event is a part of your institution's DataUp award and is an example-driven two-day workshop on basic computing skills.