Applied data skills for processing and presenting data PSYCH2016

  • Academic Session: 2024-25
  • School: MVLS College Services
  • Credits: 10
  • Level: Level 2 (SCQF level 8)
  • Typically Offered: Semester 2
  • Available to Visiting Students: No
  • Taught Wholly by Distance Learning: Yes
  • Collaborative Online International Learning: No

Short Description

This course provides an overview of the basic skills needed to turn raw data into informative summaries and visualisations presented in professional reports, presentations, and dashboards. The course will introduce learners to R, a programming language that can help automate working with data. The course will cover importing and processing data from spreadsheets, producing data summaries of descriptive statistics in tables, creating beautiful and informative visualisations, and constructing reports, presentations, and dashboards that automatically update when the underlying data changes. To achieve the course objectives, students will complete formative quizzes and exercises, in addition to submitting a summative reproducible output summarising a provided dataset.

Timetable

Online distance learning

Requirements of Entry

None

Excluded Courses

None

Assessment

Students will produce one individual project output (1000 words) weighted at 100%. Students will choose from datasets made available by the course team and will produce a reproducible report, presentation, or dashboard that summarizes and presents the dataset appropriate to the type of data.

Course Aims

Students will learn how to turn raw data into informative summaries and visualisations presented in professional reports, presentations, and dashboards. Students should be able to import and process data from spreadsheets, produce data summaries of descriptive statistics in tables, create informative visualisations, and construct reports, presentations, and dashboards that automatically update when the underlying data changes. By the end of the course students should have a wider understanding and appreciation of the concept of reproducibility and open-access software and data.

Intended Learning Outcomes of Course

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ Explain the concept of reproducibility.

■ Clean and process data using R.

■ Produce summaries of data using R.

■ Produce informative data visualisations using R.

■ Create reusable report templates using R.

Minimum Requirement for Award of Credits

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.