Course Basic R

The course Basic R Course is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, 2027.

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

Aim: The course introduces participants to R and RStudio as tools for data management, basic programming, and data visualisation. It aims to provide the basic skills needed to write clear and reproducible R scripts, work with common data structures, and conduct 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 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, including vectors, lists, and data frames.
• Use control structures, loops, and simple functions.
• Conduct descriptive analyses and create basic visualisations.
• Use introductory dplyr and tidyverse tools 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, basic data structures, and 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 data 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

Venue: Aarhus University, 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:

• 06 December 2027 09:00 - 16:00
• 07 December 2027 09:00 - 16:00
• 08 December 2027 09:00 - 16:00