Workshops for Women and Girls

Overview

Thanks to generous funding from the R Consortium, Forwards is pleased to offer the following workshops to support the development of coding skills and increase the participation of women in the R community:

  • Workshops for women are designed for women with some R coding experience who wish to learn more about package development, thereby addressing the skills gap that exists within the R community. As of 2016, an analysis of CRAN package maintainers estimated that fewer than 15% were women, and a useR! participant survey found that women were less likely than men to have experience contributing to or writing packages. Workshop participants learn to make code into an R package, do collaborative coding with GitHub, write a vignette or an article, build a package web page, and submit a package to CRAN. Participants can bring their own code that they wish to develop into a package or work with a Forwards example.

  • Workshops for high school girls serve as an introduction to coding in R and are designed for students interested in STEM, coding, and data analysis. Participants learn about plotting data, web scraping, and the development of Shiny apps. A selection of topics related to contemporary current affairs are used, and where possible, incorporate data specific to the workshop’s geographic location.

Upcoming workshops

Past Workshops

  • Forwards and ACEMS R Coding Workshop for Year 11 Girls at River City Labs
    2019-03-30, Brisbane, Australia
    Free to attend, More details
    Instructors: Di Cook and a team of brilliant young women

  • Develop Packages in R at UCD O’Brien Centre for Science
    2019-04-06, Dublin, Ireland
    There is a small charge of EUR 5.85 to cover training materials, however tea/coffee and lunch are provided.
    Book your ticket
    Instructors: Isabella Gollini, assisted by Bruna Wundervald, Chiara Cotroneo, and Jo Niec.

  • Women’s Package Development Workshop jointed hosted with R-Ladies Chicago
    2019-02-23 Chicago, USA
    Instructor: Stephanie Kirmer and Angela Li

  • Data Science in R: Coding Workshop for 11th and 12th Grade Girls at AT&T NYC Data Science Research Center
    2018-10-27 New York City, USA
    Instructors: Emily Dodwell and Joyce Robbins

  • Upgrade Your Workflow with a Custom Package at Cardiff satRday
    2018-06-23 Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
    Instructor: Heather Turner

  • Package Development Workshop for Women: Everything you need to know to create your own R package at R Ladies Melbourne by Earo Wang, slides, code 2018-05-24 Melbourne, Australia

  • Package Development Workshop for Women at eRum 2018
    2018-05-14 Budapest, Hungary
    Instructors: Heather Turner and Isabella Gollini

  • Coding Workshop for 12th Grade Girls at The University of Auckland
    2017-12-08 Auckland, New Zealand
    Instructor: Di Cook

  • Women’s Coding Workshop at The University of Auckland
    2017-12-07 Auckland, New Zealand
    Instructors: Jenny Bryan, Di Cook, and Hadley Wickham

  • Coding Workshop for 11th Grade Girls at Kathleen Syme Library
    2017-10-28 Melbourne, Australia
    Instructor: Di Cook

Code of Conduct

Workshop instructors and participants agree to adhere to the R Consortium and R Community Code of Conduct.

Computing Information

If possible, please install the most recent versions of the following software on your laptop prior to the workshop:

If you have trouble, there will be technical support prior to the start of the workshop (arrive 30 minutes early).

Workshop Materials

Workshop materials are available on GitHub under a CC-BY-NC 3.0 license.