Data workshops and guides

Many training opportunities are available within the University to gain valuable research skills and develop a better understanding of finding and working with data.

Workshops

Workshops are run by different departments, from the Bodleian Libraries' iSkills sessions to IT Learning Centre courses.

Training programmes and self-study tools

Bodleian iSkills

Bodleian iSkills is a series of free workshops focusing on general skills and resources which can be used across a wide range of disciplines.

These workshops cover topics including:

  • managing your research data
  • information discovery and searching for scholarly materials
  • managing references and formatting footnotes and bibliographies
  • keeping up to date with new research
  • measuring research impact
  • understanding copyright and looking after your intellectual property
  • Open Access publishing and complying with funder mandates for open access.

IT Training

IT Services offer a range of digital skills training for University staff, students and academics. You can book course, learn online or arrange a private course for your group.

Get started with the Digital Skills Toolkit and discover more by visiting the dedicated IT Learning Centre website.

Research Data Oxford

The tools, services, and training page lists tools, services, training resources, and sources of information and advice for research data management, including both University of Oxford resources and externally provided ones.

IT Learning Portfolio

You can download a wide range of free study materials from the IT Learning Portfolio, including a range of resources to develop IT skills for study, research and work. Browse using the Search box, pick a phrase from the Tag Cloud or the Site Picks lists, or view all of the resources.

Subject libraries

The Digital Humanities at Oxford Network organises training and events.

Q-Step

Q-Step is a programme designed to promote a step-change in quantitative social science training. The Oxford Q-Step Centre enables undergraduates across the Social Sciences to have access to enhanced training in Quantitative Methods, through lectures and data-labs. It is hosted by the Department of Politics and International Relations, in close co-operation with the Department of Sociology, and based in the Manor Road Building.

External data training and events

Online training opportunities, as well as various workshops, seminars and conferences, are also available from UKDS and other organisations.

CESSDA training

CESSDA Training provides training on research data management, data curation, etc. in the social sciences.

ICPSR webinars and tutorials

The ICPSR YouTube channel presents webinars and tutorials on accessing and using ICPSR resources. The webinars cover a variety of topics, including finding what you want on the ICPSR website, analysing ICPSR data online, creating setup files for SPSS, debugging SAS, SPSS, and Stata code, etc.

MANTRA

MANTRA is a free online interactive research data management training course hosted and maintained by the University of Edinburgh. Through a series of non-assessed units, researchers and others involved in the management of digital data for a research project can learn about:

  • research data
  • data management plans
  • organising data
  • files formats
  • documentation, metadata and citation
  • storage and security
  • data protection, access and rights
  • sharing, preserving and licensing

UK Data Service video tutorials

UKDS' range of training videos covers a variety of topics on accessing, citing, depositing, managing, and weighting data; data analysis tools, historical data, teaching with data. Subscribe to the UK Data Service YouTube channel to get all the latest videos as they are published.

The UK Data Service provides regular Training and events, and offers an online teaching resource which introduces data to non-experts via easy-to-use interactive Data Skills Modules.

Where possible, open access software is used.