R Beginner+ Course

Vrije Universiteit

Sep 30 - Oct 21, 2026

10:00 am - 15:00 pm CET

Instructors: Charlie Greene, Anouk Vlug

Helpers:

The Carpentries

The Carpentries project comprises the Data Carpentry, High-Performance Computing Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry communities of Instructors, Trainers, Maintainers, helpers, and supporters who share a mission to teach foundational computational and data science skills to researchers.

Software Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic research computing skills. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, data management, and task automation. The materials used in this course come from the following Carpentries materials: R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis, R for Social Scientists, Programming with R Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Best Practices for Scientific Computing".

Carpentries Clippings

Want to learn more and stay engaged with The Carpentries?

Carpentries Clippings is The Carpentries' monthly newsletter, where we share community news, community job postings, and more.

Code of Conduct

Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct, which also outlines how to report an incident if needed.

Workshop Logistics
Who

The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.

Where
105 De Boelelaan. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.
When

Sep 30 - Oct 21, 2026; 10:00 am - 15:00 pm CET Add to your Google Calendar.

Requirements

Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below).

Accessibility

We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. The workshop organizers have checked that:

  • The room is wheelchair / scooter accessible.
  • Accessible restrooms are available.

We are dedicated to providing a positive and accessible learning environment for all. We do not require participants to provide documentation of disabilities or disclose any unnecessary personal information. However, we do want to help create an inclusive, accessible experience for all participants. We encourage you to share any information that would be helpful to make your Carpentries experience accessible. To request accessibility support for this workshop, please fill out the accessibility support request form. If you have questions or need assistance with the accessibility support form please email us.

Glosario is a multilingual glossary for computing and data science terms. The glossary helps learners attend workshops and use our lessons to make sense of computational and programming jargon written in English by offering it in their native language. Translating data science terms also provides a teaching tool for Carpentries Instructors to reduce barriers for their learners.

Workshop Recordings

Carpentries workshops are designed to be interactive rather than lecture-based, with lessons that build upon one another. To foster a positive online learning environment, we strongly recommend that participants join in real time. As a result, workshop recordings are not recommended and may not be available to learners.

Contact

Please email c.c.greene@vu.nl for more information.

Workshop FAQ

For answers to frequently asked questions about workshops, refer to the Carpentries Workshop FAQ.

Collaborative Notes

We will use this collaborative document for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.

Surveys
Pre-Workshop Survey

Please fill out this survey before attending the workshop.

Fill Out the Pre-Workshop Survey
Post-Workshop Survey

Please fill out this survey before you leave the workshop.

Fill Out the Post-Workshop Survey
Schedule
Day 1, Wednesday 30th of September - HG-11A36 (Hoofd Gebouw/Main building, 11th floor)
Before Pre-workshop survey
09:30 Pre-course help with installations and setup
10:00 Introduction to R and RStudio
11:20 Morning break
11:30 Working with data in R and basic plots
12:30 Lunch break
13:15 Data types in R
14:00 Afternoon break
14:10 Making choices
14:45 Wrap-up
15:00 END
Day 2, Wednesday 7th of October - HG-06A37 (Hoofd gebouw/Main building, 6th floor)
10:00 Making choices (Contd)
10:30 Creating functions
11:20 Morning break
11:30 Creating Functions
12:00 Testing
12:30 Lunch break
13:15 Creating Functions (contd)
13:45 Errors
14:00 Afternoon break
14:10 Default values
15:00 Wrap-up

Day 3 - Wednesday, 14th of October - HG-02A16 (Hoofdgebouw/Main building, 2nd floor)

10:00 Reading & writing csvs
11:20 Morning break
11:30 Debugging
12:30 Lunch break
13:15 Loops
14:00 Afternoon break
14:10 Practice project
15:00 Wrap-up

Day 4, Wednesday, 21st of October - HG-01A43 (Hoofdgebouw/Main building, 1st floor)

10:00 Practice project (contd)
11:20 Morning break
11:30 Work on your own project
12:30 Lunch break
13:15 Own project (contd)
14:00 Afternoon break
14:10 Own project (contd)
14:45 Wrap-up
15:00 Post-workshop Survey
15:10 END

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Setup

To participate in a Software Carpentry workshop, you will need access to software as described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.

We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.

R

R is a programming language that is especially powerful for data exploration, visualization, and statistical analysis. To interact with R in our lessons, we typically use RStudio.

Install R by:

  • Downloading and running this .exe file from CRAN.
  • Installing the RStudio IDE.

    • Note that if you have separate user and admin accounts, you should run the installers as administrator (right-click on .exe file and select "Run as administrator" instead of double-clicking). Otherwise problems may occur later, for example when installing R packages.

Install R by:

  • Navigating to CRAN and following the instructions outlined there, using your package manager. We have reproduced the commands below:
    Use the terminal command prompt to type/copy-and-paste these commands in, pressing Enter after each line to run the command.
    Do not run the lines with # at the start of each line, as this indicates a comment and is not part of the command. 
    # update indices
sudo apt update -qq

# install two helper packages we need
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends software-properties-common dirmngr

# add the signing key for these repos
wget -qO- https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/marutter_pubkey.asc | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/cran_ubuntu_key.asc

# add the repo from CRAN
sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs)-cran40/"

# install R itself
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends r-base
  • Installing the RStudio Server IDE:
    # install dependencies
sudo apt install -y r-base-core r-recommended r-base-dev gdebi-core build-essential libcurl4-gnutls-dev libxml2-dev libssl-dev
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends gdebi-core

# cd ~/Downloads

# download the latest RStudio Server .deb file
wget https://download2.rstudio.org/server/jammy/amd64/rstudio-server-2025.05.1-513-amd64.deb

# install the .deb file
sudo gdebi rstudio-server-2025.05.1-513-amd64.deb

# start the RStudio Server
sudo systemctl start rstudio-server

# enable RStudio Server to start on boot
sudo systemctl enable rstudio-server
  • After installation of RStudio Server, check you can access it by:
    • Opening a web browser and navigating to http://localhost:8787.
    • Logging in with the username and password you used when you set up Linux / WSL2.

If you are using Windows and WSL2, the full in-depth instructions for installing R on WSL2 can be found in this POSIT article.