Data Visualization Workshops

Materials from our popular Data Visualization Workshop Series at NCSU Libraries

Getting Started with Data Visualization I: Tools for Research

In this introductory workshop to data visualization, participants will gain an understanding of the process for making good visualizations and practice with two tools, Tableau and Raw.

Slides: PPT / PDF | Instructions: PDF / DOC | Dataset

Getting Started with Data Visualization II: Elements of Visualization Design

In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to strengthen your understanding of the process for making good visualizations, review core design concepts, learn about various chart types and their best case uses. Participants will also practice doing a visualization makeover.

Slides: PPT | Instructions | Dataset | YouTube Screencast

Tableau I

Tableau is a free data visualization software. In this introductory workshop to Tableau, participants will learn how to upload a dataset to Tableau, learn about the visualization types available in Tableau, create multiple visualizations and a dashboard including a bar chart, map, line chart, and tree map. You will also learn how to publish a visualization.

Slides: PDF/ PPT | Instructions | Dataset | Videos

Tableau II

In this more advanced Tableau workshop, participants will learn more advanced visualization techniques such as filtering, creating and using sets, using multiple measures, selected highlighting, quick table calculations, dual axis charts, combination charts, and story points.

Visualize Survey Results with Tableau

Making charts and graphs from survey data is a great way to communicate findings to an audience for quick analysis and interpretation. In this workshop, we will provide hands-on activities from a Dataset set for participants to visualize survey data in Tableau. Data structuring, cleaning, and visualizing steps will be covered.

Slides: PPT / PDF | Instructions | Other Materials

D3 Workshops I and II

These workshops aim at introducing web- and JavaScript-novices to data visualization with D3.js. D3 (Data Driven Documents) is a JavaScript library that is very popular for data visualization in web environments. Part I of this worksop series introduces the attendees to basic web concepts, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript, while Part II provides an introduction to D3.

R for Absolute Beginners

This is an introduction to R, a statistical computing software, for participants who have had little or no prior experience with coding.

R for Document Creation

This workshop introduces and provides hands-on experience with R Markdown, a text formatting tool for publishing code (written in R, Python, and other languages) into documents of multiple formats. R Markdown allows researchers to publish their code along with their research enabling reproducibility.

Instructions

Data Visualization with R

This workshop will provide an introductory overview and hands-on practice with making data visualizations with R, a statistical computing language. Topics covered will include an overview of visualization packages, including ggplot2, ggvis, plotly, leaflet, and others, and considerations for creating publication-quality graphics using R. The hands-on activity will consist of creating a few visualizations using R in the RStudio development environment.

Instructions

Introduction to Machine Learning in R

This workshop will provide an introductory overview and hands-on practice with machine learning, a field of computer science and artificial intelligence that has become vital to many industries for its usefulness in data analysis. The hands-on activity will consist of creating models with common machine learning algorithms using R in the RStudio development environment.

Instructions | Slides

Digital Poster Creation

This workshop will cover the basics of creating digital posters for academic presentations, including design tips and a hands-on activity. Participants will get to create a sample poster using a provided template.

Slides | All Other Materials

Data Cleaning with Open Refine

Open Refine is a free, open source tool that makes it easy to clean and transform large data sets. This workshop will introduce you to how to clean your data to remove problematic characters, whitespaces, symbols, errors, missing elements and inconsistencies.

Infographics

In this workshop, participants will explore the difference between infographics and data visualization, learn best practices for infographic design, and practice building an infographic with PiktoChart.

Web Mapping with Carto

Carto is a free web mapping tool. Participants will learn how to make interactive maps, including maps with multiple layers, using various types of data.

Teaching Visualization Literacy Crash Course

This two-part workshop is designed to help faculty and instructors improve student success through increasing the data visualization literacy of students. The goal of the workshop is to provide training and resources to instructors to be able to teach students how to create well-designed visualizations in order to communicate research findings clearly and effectively. Part I of the workshop covers best-practices in visualization, effective visualization design, pedagogical considerations, and evaluation methods for helping students become better communicators using data visualization. Part II covers how to use Tableau in the classroom.

Part I: Teaching Visualization Literacy

Slides | Instructions

Part II: Teaching with Tableau