5-Session Webinar in Coding Good Practices
Reproducible Computational Research Skills for ICR Researchers
Course Overview
A practical 5-day course teaching essential coding practices for reproducible research, based on The Turing Way framework. Designed for researchers at all technical levels who use computational methods in their work.
Who might be interested?
- PhD students and postdocs working with data analysis
- Principal investigators managing computational research projects
- Research staff collaborating across computational and clinical teams
- Anyone writing code for research who wants to improve their practices
No prior programming experience required – the course accommodates mixed technical backgrounds.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Log in to Alma for high-performance computing
- Create standardized project structures for reproducible workflows
- Use version control (Git) effectively for collaboration and change tracking
- GitLab and GitHub repositories understand how to access the ICR's own instances
- Python code in VSCode a simple workflow with testing
- R in RStudio a simple workflow with testing
- Manage computational environments using conda and Docker for long-term reproducibility
- Apply The Turing Way principles for transparent, collaborative, and sustainable research
Course Schedule
Format: 1 hour live session per day, Monday–Friday + homework exercises
Style: Interactive, hands-on learning with practical application to your research
| Day | Topic | Live Session Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Command Line & VSCode Foundations | Project organization, command line, VSCode setup |
| Tuesday | Git & Collaboration Workflows | Git basics, collaboration, merge conflicts |
| Wednesday | Python Development in VSCode | Testing, analysis pipeline |
| Thursday | R Development in RStudio and VSCode | Testing, analysis pipeline |
| Friday | Computational Reproducibility | Conda/Docker environments, sharing, sustainability |
Video Playlists
Monday
- Section 1/3 18.07
- Section 2/3 19.02
- Section 3/3 24.12
Tuesday
- Section 1/3 8.45
- Section 2/3 27.20
- Section 3/3 24.30
Wednesday
- Section 1/3 21.19
- Section 2/3 15.06
- Section 3/3 19.43
Thursday
- Section 1/3 15.55
- Section 2/3 17.21
- Section 3/3 17.15
Friday
- Section 1/3 19.01
- Section 2/3 19.19
- Section 3/3 13.08
Technical Requirements
- Laptop with administrator privileges for software installation
- ICR network access for GitLab and HPC integration
- Pre-course setup instructions
All necessary software is free and open-source.
Time Commitment
- Live Sessions: 5 hours total (1 hour per day)
- Session reviews: 30 mins post session review suggestion
- Total Course Investment: ~8 hours over one week
Each session builds systematically – though Wednesday/Thursday are somewhat interchangeable being R and Python.
Acknowledgements
This training material adapts and builds upon The Turing Way's open-source content under CC-BY 4.0 license. We acknowledge the diverse global community of contributors who have developed these evidence-based practices for reproducible research.
More information: https://book.the-turing-way.org/