Fall menu for data skills
August 05, 2026
Author: Michelle Zhai
At Research Data Services, we want to help you learn the data skills you didn't know you needed. We teach skills to help you manage your files, work with spreadsheets, and write code to analyze data. Browse our menu for the Fall — there's something for everyone!
Starter: Plan and Organize
Bullet Journal Essentials, 2:10-3:10 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026
Learn to use a bullet journal to plan projects, track habits, and prioritize tasks. At its core, bullet journal modularizes pages in a notebook and uses the bullet list notation for a clear and concise organization of information.
Git Started with Version Control, 2:10-3:25 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026
Git is a version control system best suited for plain text files such as your research coding. It tracks and manages changes to your files over time and allows you to include documentation for each change.
Entrée: Wrangle and Analyze
R You Ready? An Introduction to R for Beginners, 2:10-4:10, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026
R is a free software environment for statistical computing, popular in biological, ecological, and medical fields. We will cover the basic R syntax, wrangle tabular data, and run statistical tests.
Shall we begin? Unix Command Line Fundamentals, 2:10-3:25 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 22 and Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026
Learn the basics of the Unix command line interface and bash scripting.
Data Wrangling in OpenRefine💎 , 2:10-3:25 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026
OpenRefine is a hidden gem in data workflows that’s specialized to clean and transform messy spreadsheet data. As one user put it: “That project would have been two weeks instead of a few months if I had known about OpenRefine back then.”
Easy as Py! Part 1: Coding concepts, 2:10-3:25, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026
Learn core coding concepts as demonstrated in Python. You will also learn to use the Google Colab Environment. (Part 1 in our 2-part Python series)
Shareables: Share and Publish (Webinars)
Navigating journal data requirements, online, noon-12:55 p.m., Friday, Sept. 25, 2026
New to sharing data for a publication? Here's how to navigate the process.
Intro to DataShare and the ISU Digital Repository, online, 10-11 a.m., Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026
Learn to share your scholarship with DataShare (ISU’s Open Research Data Repository) and ISU Digital Repository.
Dessert: Data Visualization
Data Viz 101: Effective Design, 11 a.m.-noon, Monday, Sept. 21, 2026
Learn the principles and design choices of creating effective and appealing data visualization. You will see how simple changes can lead to big improvements.
Easy as Py! Part 2: Dataframe and Data Viz, 2:10-3:25, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026
Explore the basics of dataframes and creating your own data visualization in Python. We will have an overview and demonstration of some popular data viz packages and their charts. (Part 2 in our 2-part Python series)
Main Course: Neural Networks and Generative AI
Have you ever wondered how AI pattern recognition and generative AI work under the hood? At these workshops, you will learn the model architectures behind them and try them out yourself using Python in a Jupyter notebook environment. Each series includes about 6 hours of intensive learning and 2 hours of extra Q&A.
Fundamentals of Deep Learning, 1-5 p.m., Monday, Sept. 14 and Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026
Deep learning uses multi-layered artificial neural networks to learn and recognize patterns from data that are considered too complex or subtle for hard coded software.
Generative AI with Diffusion Models, 1-5 p.m., Monday, Oct. 5 and Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026
Build on the Fundamentals of Deep Learning, you will learn about and train deep learning models with U-Net architecture, denoising diffusion models, and other techniques.
Small Bites: Lunch Webinars
Data Management in 5 Practices, online, 1-2 p.m., Friday, Nov. 6, 2026
We will go over the 5 essential practices and small habits that improve your data management.
Writing a README, online, 12:15-12:45 p.m., Friday, Nov. 13, 2026
Your data's greatest ingredients deserve a proper label. With a filename in all caps, a README grabs your attention and helps future-you (and everyone else) understand your project at a glance.
To-go: Online Resources
Webguides regularly maintained by the specialists to provide you trustworthy information.
Navigate federal research data guidance and write a data management and sharing plan for your grant proposal. This also covers FAIR and CARE principles.
Sharing data for a publication? Find out if DataShare is the right fit.
The written companion to the Data Bites webinar of the same name. A quick reference to manage your research data files, includes a template to customize your own list.
Chef's Table: Consultations and Appointments
Office Hours at Grad Mixer Wednesdays
10 a.m.-noon, Wednesdays, September through November 2026
Meet consultants and other graduate students in the Student Innovation Center. Learn more and look for a research data-themed day on the Grad Mixer page.
Get personalized help for you and your research group with the specialists. We can meet online, at Parks Library, or elsewhere on campus.
Get connected
Learn more about the data services offered by the library and connect with the workshop instructors through datashare@iastate.edu.