Training and Skills Development

Through a combination of taught workshops, and seminars we provide the necessary skills to enable researchers to write code and use software for their research.

Training

We provide various courses open to all Researchers covering the skills needed to be able to write code and use tools that will save them time and improve the quality of their code. Courses are taught using The Carpentries style of inclusive and engaging hands-on learning. Through interactive teaching, we will give you the skills needed and the confidence to use them in your Research.

We offer various courses, and more will be added. The most important thing is to provide the skills people need to perform their research, so if you think that we are missing a course that would benefit researchers (or would have benefitted you when you started) then let us know and we can look at adding it to the list of courses we offer. We can also provide bespoke training for DTC and research groups.

Our current courses on offer are:

  • Introduction to the Linux Command Line
  • Introduction to Version Control with Git
  • Plotting and programming in Python
  • Intermediate Git: Sharing and collaborating with GitHub

Current Courses

We offer various courses, and more will be added. The most important thing is to provide the skills people need to perform their research, so if you think that we are missing a course that would benefit researchers (or would have benefitted you when you started) then let us know and we can look at adding it to the list of courses we offer. We can also provide bespoke training for DTC and research groups.

Introduction to Linux and the Command Line

Want to know how to navigate the Linux command line, and use it to automate your research? Then this course is for you.

This course will introduce you to the Linux command line and walk you through:

  • Navigating files and directories
  • Creating, copying, deleting and editing files
  • Joining commands together to make them more powerful
  • How to perform the same actions on many files (loops)
  • Save commands and recipes in a file (scripting)
  • Finding files

Version Control with Git

If mycode_version5.R looks familiar to you, then this is for you. This course will give you the basics needed to use version control.

This course will introduce you to version control and Git.

Version control is the process of tracking and managing changes made to code. There are many tools for this, but the most popular is Git. We will use Git to introduce you to the basics of version control and then show you how to use several of Gits features.

Specifically, this course will cover:

  • Creating a repository, the place where our code s history is stored
  • Adding files to the repository
  • Making changes to our code and ensuring that they are tracked
  • Exploring the history of our code and "gong back in time"
  • Use Git to share your code with others.
  • Collaborating with others and merging their changes into your code.

Plotting and Programming in Python

Want to know how to program in python? Or how to plot data in python? Then this course is for you.

This course will introduce you to the Python programming language and programming by guiding you through reading in data from a file and plotting it.

This is a two-part course, the first part will cover:

  • Variables and assigning values to them
  • Data types
  • Functions and built-in help
  • How to use libraries/packages
  • Reading in data
  • DataFrams and manipulating your data
  • Plotting

Intermediate Git: Sharing and collaborating with GitHub

Want to take your Git usage to the next level? Want to know what a pull request is or how to fork and merge? This course will show you how.

This course will show you how to take your usage of Git and Github to the next level by harnessing the power of GitHub for collaboration.

Have ever been confused about how to start a Pull Request or how to fork a repository and merge your changes back. Perhaps you know and want to gain confidence in doing so? This course will teach you how to collaborate using git, and give you an environment in which to practise.

Some of the things covered in the course will include:

  • Pull Requests
  • Forking and merging back into the original repository
  • Notifying a repository of a bug (raising an issue)
  • Continuous Integration with Git (running tests when you push changes to a repo)