Course Basic R

The course Basic R is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, 2026.

Requirements for participation: No prior experience with R is required. Participants are interested in learning programming for data analysis. Familiarity with general statistical terminology is helpful but not necessary.

Aim: The course introduces participants to R and RStudio as tools for data management, basic programming, and data visualisation. It aims to provide the fundamental skills needed to write clear and reproducible R scripts, handle common data structures, and perform simple descriptive and graphical analyses. The course focuses on programming principles and reproducible workflows rather than statistical theory.

Learning outcomes: 

Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to:

• Navigate RStudio and work efficiently with the Console, Script, and Environment panes.
• Install and manage R packages from CRAN.
• Set up a project directory and save reproducible scripts.
• Import, explore, and manipulate datasets in R.
• Understand and apply basic data structures (vectors, lists, data frames).
• Implement control structures, loops, and simple functions.
• Conduct descriptive analyses and create basic visualisations.
• Introduction to dplyr and the tidyverse for data wrangling.

Workload: The full workload of the course is expected to be 18 hours

Content: 

Day 1: Introduction to R and RStudio; CRAN and package installation; project setup; working with the Console and scripts; data types and basic data structures; basic calculations.
Day 2: Data import and cleaning; subsetting and transforming data; control structures and loops; writing and debugging simple functions; introduction to the tidyverse and dplyr.
Day 3: Descriptive analyses and visualisation with base R and ggplot2.

A short mini-project will be completed at the end of each day to consolidate the topics covered.

Instructors: Tahereh Gholipourshahraki + Genona Torruella Maseras (course in English)

Venue: Aarhus University, Campus Aarhus

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Health Research Year students from Aarhus University
• PhD students enrolled at partner universities of the Nordoc collaboration
• PhD students from other institutions in the open market agreement for PhD courses

Course dates:

• 13 April 2026 09:00 - 16:00
• 14 April 2026 09:00 - 16:00
• 15 April 2026 09:00 - 16:00