Workshops

UM Libraries offer workshops at regularly scheduled times and by request, both in person and online. See topics and descriptions below. To request a workshop, please fill out a workshop request form. If you would prefer a one-on-one consultation (either virtual or in-person), please fill out a consultation request form. In addition, our Learning Commons academic service partners, including the Camner Center for Academic Resources, also offer virtual workshops.

Starting the Research Process

Sharing Your Work

Digital Humanities

For a complete list of workshops offered, see the Data Services Workshops page.

Data Management

Data Analysis

For a complete list of workshops offered, see the Data Services Workshops page.

  • Data Services resources (including tutorials and consultation information) available at the Data Services page.
  • Workshop topics include Data Management, SPSS, R/RStudio, Stata, SAS, Tableau, NVivo, and Python.
  • Customized workshops available on request.

GIS Analysis

For a complete list of workshops offered, see the GIS Courses & Workshops page. Customized workshops available upon request.

Software Carpentry

For a complete list of workshops offered, see the Data Services Workshops page.

Starting the Research Process


Developing Your Research Question
Are you beginning a research paper or project? This interactive workshop will provide you with strategies to connect your own interests to a topic, formulate possible research questions, narrow and broaden your topic, and more.

Literature Searching in the subject area of your choice
Learn how to efficiently navigate the terrain of our specialized electronic databases, utilize subject guides to their fullest, and understand how your librarian can help lead the way.


Working with Primary Sources: an Overview of the Cuban Heritage Collection and/or Special Collections
Come to the Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) for a hands-on, interactive workshop focusing on using primary source materials drawn from the CHC’s archival and print collections. AND/OR learn about the rich resources available to seasoned researchers and amateur history detectives at the UM Special Collections.


Managing Your Research with EndNote, Mendeley, or RefWorks
A researcher’s guide to staying organized and working efficiently. We will discuss how to establish your information flow, create bibliographies with ease, and share your research with your colleagues with any one of these popular citation software.

Sharing Your Work


Working with Your Electronic Thesis or Dissertation
How to prepare your electronic thesis or dissertation for submission and institutional archiving. Learn about the process, review deadlines, and get tech savvy tips to ensure success.


Presentation Tools and Basic Skills
Learn about presentation tools like PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, and Google Slides. This workshop covers the advantages and disadvantages of each of these tolls so you can best decide which one is right for your project. The workshop will also touch upon some basic design skills to improve the look of your presentations.


Managing your copyrights: Retain the rights important to you
As scholars and researchers, we all create work in which we hold the copyright. When we publish that work, we often are asked to assign that copyright to the publisher. In some cases, this may mean you may lose the right to reuse your work or to make it available to colleagues or on the web. In this workshop, you will learn what rights you hold, how to read copyright transfer and license agreements, and how to approach retaining the rights most important to you.

Digital Humanities


Introduction to Text Mining with AntConc
This workshop introduces participants to basic skills associated with text mining (aka distant reading) using AntConc (free, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux). Basic skills and tasks include configuring the tool and text, using the Concordance, Key Word in Context (KWiC), and Collocate analysis methods. We will also discuss the process of finding or creating representative corpora, and developing appropriate research questions for text mining projects. This workshop can be taught with a range of available text materials including literature, film reviews, and news stories.


Cleaning and Transforming Data with OpenRefine and Excel
This workshop introduces participants to techniques for cleaning and transforming data with OpenRefine and Microsoft Excel. Sometimes datasets are created by multiple individuals, and/or created without a clear set of guidelines. The resulting datasets may be difficult to analyze because they lack standardization (i.e., New York City may be listed as “NYC,” “New York, NY”, “New York City”, and “New York City, NY.” In this workshop, participants will learn how to quickly and efficiently find standardization issues and other errors, and how to correct them in bulk, as well as how to enhance existing datasets by adding new metadata fields.

Software Carpentry


Introduction to the Unixshell
Learn how to use the UNIX shell to navigate file systems, manipulate file system structures, and write a simple shell script.

Introduction to GitHub
Learn to use git and GitHub to create a git repository, push it to GitHub, and then collaborate with peers.

Introduction to Python
Learn to use Python in the Jupyter notebook environment to manipulate data, perform basic statistics, and create simple graphics

Introduction to R
Learn to load data into R studio, perform basic statistics, and create simple graphics.

Introduction to SQL
Learn to describe and create relational databases and to use structured query language (SQL) to construct querys.

GIS Data


Mapping the 2016 Election in Florida
This workshop will show you how to acquire election data at the precinct level, map it to precinct boundaries, and compare it to socio-economic data to analyze different segments of the voting population.


Developing Conservation Strategies for Florida’s Forests
This workshop will show you how to acquire forest and associated data from the Internet, examine changes in this type of land cover, and utilize a variety of GIS tools to develop conservation strategies on for the terrestrial and marine parts of its ecosystem.


Mapping Gun Violence in the U.S.
This workshop will show you how to find current gun violence related data, map it in a GIS, and analyze relationships between gun access and crime. This workshop will focus on geocoding as a means to bring data into your GIS.


Sugarcane Industry Impacts on the Transportation Infrastructure in Hawaii
This workshop will show you how to acquire and georeference historic print maps, clip map collars to create mosaics, geocode gazetteer data, and vectorize/attribute features.


Hurricane Loss Mitigation in Melbourne Beach, Florida
This workshop will show you how to find landuse/landcover raster data, GIS property Information for Brevard County along with associated tabular property data stored in a Microsoft Access relational database. You will then learn to utilize relational database tabular data in a GIS along with geoprocessing tools to subset a specific dataset that will be turned into a report. This workshop will focus on utilizing external relational databases to do GIS analysis.


Distribution Analysis with Population Data
This workshop will show you how to find current world population data formatted as a table from an Internet source and join it to a vector country boundary file so distribution of the population data can be mapped. The workshop will also cover working with raster (gridded cells of data) population data to investigate population distribution in more detail.


Examining Crime as a Public Health Issue in Miami-Dade County
This workshop will show you how to find current crime related data, map it in a GIS, find the nearest incidents to a particular hospital, and examine the proximity of the hospitals to the crime incidents.


Mapping the Biography of a Runaway Slave in Cuba
This workshop will show you how to extract place names from text and geocode it to a map, create a basemap from a Digital Elevation Model (DEM), create elevation profiles from three-dimensional route lines, and use data-driven pages to create a strip map styled PDF book map.


Mapping the Stairway to Heaven with Interactive and Story Maps
This workshop will show you how to use collected data from the field, transform it into spatial information, and create an online map and story that allows users to interact and better understand the spatially modelled information.


Testing Water Quality at UM using Collector for ArcGIS
This workshop will show you how to use ArcGIS for Desktop to develop and create services for a shared GIS geodatabase with domains and lists that will allow multiple editors to simultaneously collect standardized data live or offline utilizing ArcGIS Online and Collector for ArcGIS. ArcGIS for Desktop will be used to analyze the collected data and subsequently publish and interactive map that can be shared with colleagues or the public.

Data Management


The Data Management Challenge: Wrangling Data in the Research Environment
This is an introduction to topics in research data management designed to foster skills and encourage data management best practices for efficiency, compliance and security in the research environment. This is a discipline agnostic seminar. Specific learning goals include the identification of best practices for: file naming conventions, file system organization, data security, data privacy, backup strategies, data sharing, data documentation, and data publication. These topics introduce practical behaviors to ease the digital research process.

Data Management and Research Design
This is the first in a series of short seminars that explore topics in research data management (see intro above and other DM seminars in this list). This is a discipline agnostic seminar. Specific learning goals include to: Understand federal policy context for data management and sharing, explain the data lifecycle, critically evaluate existing Data Management Plans (DMPs), and be able to identify key elements in a DMP. As a product of the seminar/workshop attendees will outline a data management plan (DMP) for their research.

File Formats and System Organization for Research
This is the second in a series of short seminars that explore topics in research data management (see intro above and other DM seminars in this list). This is a discipline agnostic seminar. Specific learning goals include to: Understand file format choices and their implications for data sharing, data publication, and data re-use, identify best practices for file system organization, and identify best practices for file naming conventions. As a product of the seminar/workshop attendees will select file formats, choose a file naming convention, and design a file system architecture for their research.


Research Data Description and Documentation
This is the third in a series of short seminars that explore topics in research data management (see intro above and other DM seminars in this list). This is a discipline agnostic seminar. Specific learning goals include to: Identify disciplinary metadata standards (if they exist), describe discipline agnostic metadata standards, and understand how metadata facilitates discovery, sharing and access to data resources. As a product of the seminar/workshop attendees will create metadata for a selected subset of the data from their research.


Research Data Publication: Repositories and Sharing
This is the fourth in a series of short seminars that explore topics in research data management (see intro above and other DM seminars in this list). This is a discipline agnostic seminar. Specific learning goals include to: Identify discipline specific repositories, understand data ownership in the context of research institutions, be able to decode repository requirements to publish data, and create correct citations for referencing data in publications. As a product of the seminar/workshop attendees will create a deposit package from a selected subset of the data from their research for publication in a data repository.

Data Analysis


Introduction to SPSS
Designed for introductory SPSS users. It provides an introduction to the SPSS software program, including its software environment, importing data, descriptive -statistics, transforming variables, selecting and splitting data, and visualization

Intermediate SPSS
Designed for intermediate SPSS users. It covers common statistical methods in SPSS such as means comparisons, ANOVA, linear regression, and logistic regression models.

Introduction to R/R Studio
Designed for introductory R and R Studio users. It provides an introduction to the R software program, including its programming language, software -environment, importing data, descriptive statistics, transforming variables, selecting and splitting data, exploratory tests, and visualization

Intermediate R/R Studio
Designed for intermediate R and R Studio users. It covers common statistical methods in R such as means comparisons, ANOVA, linear regression, and visualization.

Introduction to Stata
Designed for introductory Stata users. It provides an introduction to the Stata software program, including its programming language, software environment, -importing data, descriptive statistics, transforming variables, selecting and splitting data, exploratory tests, and visualization.

Intermediate Stata
Designed for intermediate Stata users. It covers common statistical methods in Stata such as means comparisons, ANOVA, linear regression, and logistic regression models.

Introduction to SAS
Designed for introductory SAS users. It provides an introduction to the SAS software program, including its programming language, software environment, importing data, descriptive statistics, transforming variables, selecting and splitting data, exploratory tests, and visualization.”

Intermediate SAS
Designed for intermediate SAS users. It covers common statistical methods in SAS such as means comparisons, ANOVA, linear regression, and logistic regression models.”

Data Visualization with Tableau
Introduction to using the software program Tableau for visualization.

Data Visualization with R
Introduction to using the software program R for visualization.

Qualitative Research with Atlas.ti
Introduction to conducting qualitative research using Atlas.ti, including the environment, coding, and indexing textual data.

Qualitative Research with NVivo
Introduction to conducting qualitative research using NVivo, including the environment, coding, and indexing textual data.

Introduction to LaTeX
Introduction to typesetting documents using the LaTeX programming language.

Introduction to Python
Introduction to the Python programming language.”

Introduction to Survey Research
Introduction the techniques of survey research, from questionnaire design to survey administration

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