Events and training

La Trobe researchers and research students have access to a wide range of specialised courses, from beginner through to advanced levels in High-Performance Computing, Excel for research, data management and visualisation, cleaning and exploring data, and more. There is no cost to La Trobe researchers and research students for the majority of these courses. Many of these workshops are presented by our partners, Intersect Australia Limited.

Research Education and Development (RED) have an extensive workshop and seminar program listed on their website. There are also a range of workshops and training opportunities hosted by organisations external to La Trobe, which can be accessed by clicking here.

For Digital Research support, visit the online Digital Research Drop in session on the second Tuesday of each month, 1 - 2 pm

2023 Courses

Campus: M = Melbourne, B = Bendigo, AW = Albury Wodonga, MIL = Mildura, S = Shepparton, C = City, O = Online

DateSession titleCampusBooking
Day 1: Tuesday 13 June
9:00 am - 3:30 pm

Day 2: Wednesday 14 June
9:00 am - 3:30 pm

Basic Statistics with R

Learn a simple yet powerful way to design and carry out analyses in R in this 2-day introductory workshop.

What is R? R is a free software package for statistical computing and graphics.

Basic Statistics with R introduces statistical concepts in a non-technical way and emphasises their practical application in R. The workshop will provide plenty of opportunities to gain hands-on experience and to access in-class support

MInformation and registration
Thursday 15 June
10:00am - 1:00pm

Getting started with Nvivo (Windows)

Does your research see you working through unstructured and non-numerical data? With the ability to collect, store and analyse different data types all in the one location makes, it’s easy to see why NVivo is becoming the tool of choice for many researchers.

NVivo allows researchers to simply organise and manage data from a variety of sources including surveys, interviews, articles, video, email, social media and web content, PDFs and images. Coding your data allows you to discover trends and compares themes as they emerge across different sources and data types. Using NVivo memos and visualisations combined with the ability to integrate with popular bibliographic tools you can get your research ready for publication sooner.
OExpression of interest
Day 1: Tuesday 20 June
9:00 am - 3:30 pm

Day 2: Wednesday 21 June
9:00 am - 3:30 pm

Basic Statistics with Stata

Learn a simple yet powerful way to design and carry out analyses in Stata in this 2-day introductory workshop.

What is Stata? Stata is a statistical software package which is particularly popular among researchers from a diverse range of fields.

Basic Statistics with Stata introduces statistical concepts in a non-technical way and emphasises their practical application in Stata. The workshop will provide plenty of opportunities to gain hands-on experience and to access in-class support.

M

Information and registration

Day 1: Monday 26 June
9:00 am - 3:30 pm

Day 2: Tuesday 27 June
9:00 am - 3:30 pm

Intermediate Statistics with R: Regression Analysis

Learn about different regression models and how to carry out their analyses in R in this 2-day intermediate workshop. 

What is R?R is a free software package for statistical computing and graphics.

Intermediate Statistics with R introduces various types of regression models in a non-technical way and emphasises their practical application in R. The workshop will provide plenty of opportunities to gain hands-on experience and to access in-class support.

M

Information and registration

Wednesday 28 June
9:00 am - 3:30 pm

Sample Size Calculation Workshop

Using free software for sample size & statistical power calculations

What is G*Power? G*Power is a free statistical software package for power and sample size analysis. It offers point-and-click functionality and covers a wide variety of statistical tests.

In this 1-day workshop, concepts of statistical power and relevant statistical tests are covered in a non-technical way. Designed to be hands-on, the workshop focuses on the practical application of statistical methods. There will be plenty of opportunities to access in-class support.

M

Information and registration

Thursday 29 June
10:00am - 1:00pm

Data Capture and Surveys in REDCap

Would you like to enable secure and reliable data collection forms and manage online surveys? Would your study benefit from web-based data entry? Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) might be for you.

This course will introduce you to REDCap, a rapidly evolving web tool developed by researchers for researchers. REDCap features a high level of security, and a high degree of customisability for your forms and advanced user access control. It also features free, unlimited survey distribution functionality and a sophisticated export module with support for all standard statistical programs.
OExpression of interest
Day 1: Wednesday 5 July
10:00am - 1:00pm

Day 2: Thursday 6 June
10:00am - 1:00pm

Programming with R

R is quickly gaining popularity as a programming language of choice for statisticians, data scientists and researchers. It has an excellent ecosystem including the powerful RStudio development environment and the Shiny web application framework. But getting started with R can be challenging, particularly if you’ve never programmed before. That’s where this introductory course comes in.

We teach using RStudio, which allows program code, results, visualisations and documentation to be blended seamlessly. Join us for a live coding workshop where we write programs that produce results, using the researcher-focused training modules from the highly regarded Software Carpentry Foundation.
OExpression of interest
Tuesday 11 July
10:00am - 1:00pm

Longitudinal Trials in REDCap

REDCap is a powerful and extensible application for managing and running longitudinal data collection activities. With powerful features such as organising data collections instruments into predefined events, you can shepherd your participants through a complex survey at various time points with very little configuration.

This course will introduce some of REDCap’s more advanced features for running longitudinal studies, and builds on the foundational material taught in REDCAP101 – Managing Data Capture and Surveys with REDCap.

OExpression of interest
Day 1: Thursday 20 July
10:00am - 1:00pm

Day 2: Friday 21 July
10:00am - 1:00pm

Excel for Researchers

Data rarely comes in the form you require. Often it is messy. Sometimes it is incomplete. And sometimes there’s too much of it. Frequently, it has errors. We’ll use one of the most widespread data wrangling tools, Microsoft Excel, to import, sort, filter, copy, protect, transform, summarise, merge, and visualise research data. While aimed at novice Excel users, most attendees will walk away with new tricks to work more efficiently with their research data.

OExpression of interest
Tuesday 25 July
10:00am - 1:00pm

Getting started with Nvivo (Windows)

Does your research see you working through unstructured and non-numerical data? With the ability to collect, store and analyse different data types all in the one location makes, it’s easy to see why NVivo is becoming the tool of choice for many researchers.

NVivo allows researchers to simply organise and manage data from a variety of sources including surveys, interviews, articles, video, email, social media and web content, PDFs and images. Coding your data allows you to discover trends and compares themes as they emerge across different sources and data types. Using NVivo memos and visualisations combined with the ability to integrate with popular bibliographic tools you can get your research ready for publication sooner.

OExpression of interest
Day 1: Tuesday 8 August
10:00am - 1:00pm

Day 2: Wednesday 9 August
10:00am - 1:00pm

Data Entry and Processing in SPSS

This hands-on training is designed to familiarize you with the interface and basic data processing functionalities in SPSS. We will examine several “must know” syntax commands that can help streamline data entry and processing. In addition, we will explore how to obtain descriptive statistics in SPSS and perform visualization.

This workshop is recommended for researchers and postgraduate students who are new to SPSS or Statistics; or those simply looking for a refresher course before taking a deep dive into using SPSS, either to apply it to their research or to add it to their arsenal of eResearch skills.

OExpression of interest
Tuesday 15 August
10:00am - 1:00pm

Data Capture and Surveys in REDCap

Would you like to enable secure and reliable data collection forms and manage online surveys? Would your study benefit from web-based data entry? Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) might be for you.

This course will introduce you to REDCap, a rapidly evolving web tool developed by researchers for researchers. REDCap features a high level of security, and a high degree of customisability for your forms and advanced user access control. It also features free, unlimited survey distribution functionality and a sophisticated export module with support for all standard statistical programs.

OExpression of interest
Day 1: Thursday 17 August
10:00am - 1:00pm

Day 2: Friday 18 August
10:00am - 1:00pm

Programming with Python

Python has deservedly become a popular language for scientific computing. It has all the friendly features and conveniences you’d expect of a modern programming language, and also a rich set of libraries for working with data.
We teach using Jupyter notebooks, which allow program code, results, visualisations and documentation to be blended seamlessly. Perfect for sharing insights with others while producing reproducible research. Join us for this live coding workshop where we write programs that produce results, using the researcher-focused training modules from the highly regarded Software Carpentry Foundation.

OExpression of interest
Day 1: Tuesday 22 August
10:00am - 1:00pm

Day 2: Wednesday 23 August
10:00am - 1:00pm

Getting Started with HPC Using PBS Pro

Is your computer’s limited power throttling your research ambitions? Are your analysis scripts pushing your laptop’s processor to its limits? Is your software crashing because you’ve run out of memory? Would you like to unleash to power of the Unix command line to automate and run your analysis on supercomputers that you can access for free? High-Performance Computing (HPC) allows you to accomplish your analysis faster by using many parallel
CPUs and huge amounts of memory simultaneously. This course provides a hands on introduction to running software on HPC infrastructure using PBS Pro.

OExpression of interest

More workshops - watch this space!

Workshop title and description
Learn to Program: Python
Python has deservedly become a popular language for scientific computing. It has all the friendly features and conveniences you’d expect of a modern programming language, and also a rich set of libraries for working with data. We teach using Jupyter notebooks, which allow program code, results, visualisations and documentation to be blended seamlessly. Perfect for sharing insights with others while producing reproducible research. Join us for this live coding workshop where we write programs that produce results, using the researcher-focused training modules from the highly regarded Software Carpentry Foundation.

Getting Started with NVivo for Windows - Does your research see you working through unstructured and non-numerical data? With the ability to collect, store and analyse different data types all in the one location makes, it’s easy to see why NVivo is becoming the tool of choice for many researchers. NVivo allows researchers to simply organise and manage data from a variety of sources including surveys, interviews, articles, video, email, social media and web content, PDFs and images. Coding your data allows you to discover trends and compares themes as they emerge across different sources and data types. Using NVivo memos and visualisations combined with the ability to integrate with popular bibliographic tools you can get your research ready for publication sooner.

Advanced HPC: Parallel Programming - This intensive full-day course introduces different parallel programming methods: OpenMP as a widespread method for a shared memory programming model and MPI as the standard for a distributed memory programming model. It is targeted at C and Fortran programmers
Statistical Comparisons using R - This practical workshop will help participants to choose and use the appropriate standard statistical test for their data by introducing key concepts of inferential statistics in R. Participants will learn how to compute and interpret hypothesis tests for popular statistical models such as correlation, contingency tables, chi-square test, t-test and ANOVA.
Basic Statistics with R - Learn a simple yet powerful way to design and carry out statistical analyses in R - like a real statistician!. This three half day workshop introduces statistical concepts in a non-technical way and emphasises their practical application in R. The workshop will provide plenty of opportunities to gain hands-on experience and  access support from our expert statisticians. This course is very popular so book early.

Intermediate Statistics with R - The thrilling sequel to the extremely popular 'Basic Statistics with R' takes statistics to the next level!. Amanda shakes it up in this three half day workshop introducing various types of regression models in a non-technical way and demonstrates their practical application in R. The workshop will provide plenty of opportunities to gain hands-on experience and access support from our expert statisticians.

Cleaning and Exploring your data with Open Refine - Do you have messy data from multiple inconsistent sources, or open-responses to questionnaires? Do you want to improve the quality of your research data by refining it and using the power of the internet? Open Refine is the perfect partner to Excel. It is a powerful, free tool for exploring, normalising and cleaning datasets. In this course you'll work through the various features of Refine by working on a fictional but plausible humanities research project.
Data visualisation with Google Fusion Tables - This course is ideal for researchers who work with large data sets and want to convey their research outcomes clearly and persuasively in a visual manner. By creating a heat map by merging geospatial data and crime statistics, participants will gain skills in visualisation that they can apply to their research.
Excel Fu for Researchers - Do you have large amounts of data that is messy, incomplete and contains errors?  During this workshop you will learn how to use Excel to import, sort, filter, copy, protect, transform, summarise, merge, and visualise research data. Access the course outline here.
Beyond Basics: Conditionals and Visualisation in Excel
After cleaning your database, you may need to apply some conditional analysis to glean greater insights from your data. You may also want to enhance your charts for inclusion into a manuscript, thesis or report by adding some statistical elements. This course will cover conditional syntax, nested functions, statistical charting and outlier identification.

Armed with the tips and tricks from our introductory Excel for Researchers course, you will be able to tap into even more of Excel’s diverse functionality and apply it to your research project.
G*Power Workshop: Sample size analysis for researchers - G*Power is a free statistical software package for power and sample size analysis. It offers point-and-click functionality and covers a wide variety of statistical tests. Presented by the Statistics Consultancy Platform, this full day G*Power workshop includes concepts of statistical power and relevant statistical tests presented in a non-technical way. Designed to be hands-on, the workshop focuses on the practical application of statistical methods.
Introduction to Unix - Do you plan to use high performance computing for bioinformatics?  Knowledge of the Unix operating system is fundamental to being productive on HPC systems. Command line confidence unlocks powerful computing resources beyond the desktop. It enables repetitive tasks to be automated and it comes with a swag of handy tools that can be combined in powerful ways. This workshop will introduce you to the fundamental Unix concepts and teach you to run programs and write scripts through a series of hands-on exercises.

Introduction to Programming using Matlab - MATLAB is an incredibly powerful programming environment with a rich set of analysis toolkits optimized for solving engineering and scientific problems.Built-in graphics make it easy to visualize and gain insights from data and a vast library of prebuilt toolboxes lets you get started right away with algorithms essential to your domain.

Introduction to High Performance Computing (HPC) - HPC allows you to accomplish your analysis faster by using many parallel CPUs and huge amounts of memory simultaneously. This 1-day course will introduce you to the Unix environment and show you how to transfer your data onto, and run software on HPC infrastructure.
Introductory Programming Workshop: Python, Unix and Git - Many research fields can benefit from automation and programmatic techniques, ranging from the humanities and social sciences through biomedical sciences and engineering. The tools and techniques taught in this workshop will be of use to anyone who currently uses a computer for their research.
Introduction to Unix for HPC - High-Performance Computing (HPC) allows you to accomplish your analysis faster by using many parallel CPUs and huge amounts of memory simultaneously. This 2-day course will introduce you to the Unix environment and show you how to transfer your data onto, and run software on HPC infrastructure.
Managing Data Capture and surveys in REDCap - Would you like to enable secure and reliable data collection forms and manage online surveys? Would your study benefit from web-based data entry? Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) might be for you. Access the course outline here.
Nectar Research Cloud - Find out what cloud computing is, how it works, how it can benefit your research and what types of service Nectar offers. This course will provide hands-on instructions on how to launch an instance on the Cloud, connect to it, configure it and set up storage so that it can be accessed from the instance and remotely from the office computer.
Office365 and One Drive, Delve and Sway - This session will help you to understand the capabilities of Office 365, how to access the apps and apply them to your research or work.
Powerful text searching and matching with Regexes - Regular Expressions (regexes) are a powerful way to handle a multitude of different types of data. They can be used to find patterns in text and make sophisticated replacements. Think of them as find and replace on steroids. Come along to this workshop to learn what they can do and how to apply them to your research.
Regular Expressions on Command - Would you like to use regular expressions with the classic command line utilities find, grep, sed and awk? These venerable Unix utilities allow you to search, filter and transform large amounts of text (including many common data formats) efficiently and repeatably.
Software Carpentry: Introduction to Unix Shell - Do you want to unlock powerful computing resources beyond the desktop, including virtual machines and High Performance Computing? Unix can enable repetitive tasks to be automated and it comes with a swag of handy tools that can be combined in powerful ways to help with your research.

Software Carpentry: Introduction to Matlab - MATLAB is an incredibly powerful programming environment with a rich set of analysis toolkits optimized for solving engineering and scientific problems. Built-in graphics make it easy to visualize and gain insights from data and a vast library of prebuilt toolboxes lets you get started right away with algorithms essential to your domain.

Software Carpentry: Introduction to programming with Python - This one day workshop is aimed at researchers and research students who would like to start learning to code in the Python programming language, a popular language for scientific computing.
Learn to Program: R - R is quickly gaining popularity as a programming language of choice for statisticians, data scientists and researchers. It has an excellent ecosystem including the powerful RStudio development environment and the Shiny web application framework, but getting started with R can be challenging, particularly if you’ve never programmed before. That’s where this introductory course comes in. We teach using RStudio, which allows program code, results, visualisations and documentation to be blended seamlessly. Join us for a live coding workshop where we write programs that produce results, using the researcher-focused training modules from the highly regarded Software Carpentry Foundation.
Software Carpentry: Introduction to version control with Git - Have you mistakenly overwritten programs or data and want to learn techniques to avoid repeating the loss? Version control systems are one of the most powerful tools available for avoiding data loss and enabling reproducible research.

Using Databases and SQL - Do you need a better way to store your structured research data? Structured Query Language (SQL) is the standard means for reading from and writing to databases. Databases use multiple tables, linked by well-defined relationships, to store large amounts of data without needless repetition while maintaining the integrity of your data. Moving from spread sheets and text documents to a structured relational database will reward you many times over in speed, efficiency and power.

Basic statistics with STATA - This workshop introduces statistical concepts in a non-technical way and emphasises their practical application in STATA. The workshop will provide plenty of opportunities to gain hands-on experience and to access in-class support.