Data Carpentry for Biologists: A semester long Data Carpentry course using ecological and other biological examples

Abstract

Data Carpentry for Biologists is a semester-long course in best practices for storing, loading, manipulating, and visualizing data using R. The course material includes video demonstrations, lecture notes for live coding demonstrations, links to openly available reference readings, coding practice exercises, and the output expected from completed exercises. The course is structured in topics that combine sets of learning materials covering a week of college level material on a single subject. The lessons and exercises focus on biological examples with a particular focus on ecological examples. The course material is designed to be used in two ways. First, it can be used in a self-paced online format for individual learners. This is achieved by having all of the necessary material to understand and complete the course present on the website along with instructions for self-guided learning. Second, the course is designed to be modified and remixed to be taught in college and university classrooms. This is achieved by a modular design that allows modifying all aspects of the course and by detailed documentation for course customization. The website is viewed by thousands of users each month and the material and infrastructure has been used in courses at multiple colleges and universities.