Programming language workshops

An online workshop introducing the R programming language for data visualisation, aimed at research students and researchers with no programming experience.

Dates for 2026:

• Tuesday 24-Wednesday 25 March, 9.30am-1pm
• Tuesday 15-Wednesday 16 September, 9.30am-1pm

Learning outcomes

Attendees will be able to:

• Build and modify plots to visualise tabular data
• Explore tabular datasets using vectors, data frames, and functions
• Import, manipulate, and export datasets and figures

 This workshop is based on The Carpentries' Data Analysis and Visualization in R for Ecologists online lesson.

After the workshop

• The Statistical Consulting Centre (SCC) provides a two-day in-person workshop that may suit those who want more focus on using statistics for research.

Python is a general-purpose programming language that can be used to perform a wide range of tasks. Python is routinely used by the research community for data science, machine learning, building websites, scraping data from the web, interfacing with microcontrollers, and automating tasks.

Dates for 2026:

Wednesday 11-Thursday 12 March
Tuesday 22-Wednesday 23 September

Learning outcomes

Attendees will be able to:

• Describe and use fundamental Python syntax and data types for data analysis
• Analyse and visualise tabular data
• Import, manipulate and export datasets contained in multiple files

This workshop is based on the Programming with Python online lesson (The Carpentries). View the lesson materials.

An online introductory workshop on navigating a file system and automating repetitive tasks using the command line.

What is the command line?

The command line (also called the shell, Unix shell, terminal, or bash) provides an interactive programming interface and offers a different approach to that of software with a GUI (Graphical User Interface). Use of the command line is fundamental to a wide range of research computing processes.

Dates for 2026:

Thursday 14 April, 10:00am - 3:00pm

Learning outcomes

The command line can be used by researchers to:

• Navigate files and directories more quickly and efficiently
• Perform an action or set of actions on a large number of files at once
• Chain commands together into complex workflows that can be saved and rerun on sets of files
• Access and use high-performance computing services such as those provided by Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand (REANNZ)
• More efficiently use Research virtual machines

View the lesson materials.

All workshop participants are encouraged to join Hacky Hour to post questions and share their experiences with data management, programming, and research computing topics.

Research Data Support Services
Email: researchdata@auckland.ac.nz