Gaining data transformation skills that will save you time, reduce errors, and create analysis-ready data
Location:
Edinburgh or interactive online course using MS Teams (you choose)
Wallingford (subject to demand in 2026)
Date:
Tue 23 - Thu 25 September 2025 (Start on day 1 13:30, finish on day 3: 13:00)
The interactive online course runs over two days.
We will start mid-day on Tuesday and finish mid-day on Thursday. There will be an optional software familiarisation session before the course starts (interactive online via MS Teams for all learners; Thu 18 September 2 pm).
Cost:
Students: from £549
Professionals: from £599
The in-person places cost £30 more. (the early bird tickets have already sold out)
Book online now here!
Short course description:
This interactive 2-day course will equip you with essential skills to efficiently transform and manage environmental data using R, a powerful open-source tool. Whether you're new to R or have some experience, you'll learn how to streamline workflows, save time, and minimize the risk of human error. Through practical exercises using real-world environmental datasets, you'll gain hands-on experience. This will give you the skills you need for combining, cleaning, and preparing data from various sources so that you can better analyse data going forward.
We will hold an optional R software familiarization session the Thursday before the course. This will help beginners get comfortable with the basics, ensuring you’re fully prepared. By the end of the course, you'll be able to apply these skills to your own projects. This will enhance your data accuracy, reproducibility and efficiency in your work.
Learning outcome:
By the end of the course, you will be confident in transforming and managing environmental datasets using R. You will have the knowledge and skills to solve problems more efficiently, reduce data handling errors, and save time in your research or consultancy work.
Course objectives:
This course will help you to:
1. Boost efficiency: Learn how data transformation tools like R can save time by automating repetitive tasks and minimizing manual errors.
2. Ensure data quality: Understand how to use R to meet high data quality standards by cleaning and validating datasets from diverse sources.
3. Streamline your workflow: Learn to read, combine, and manipulate multiple datasets in different formats to prepare them for analysis.
4. Tidy and prepare your data: Make your data ‘analysis-ready’. Learn how to use best practices for cleaning, formatting, and organizing information.
5. Improve reproducibility: Gain skills in documenting your scripts and workflows. Ensure your research or project can be replicated and audited with ease.
6. Solve real-world problems: Apply these techniques to real environmental datasets. Get your data ready to solve complex problems and make data-driven decisions.
Target audience:
Anyone who is looking to work with data in a reproducible manner and currently works mainly in spreadsheets or is looking to prepare data for analysis in R.
e.g. MSc /PhD/ Early career researchers/ Ecologists / Environmental scientists / Environmental consultants
Level:
Beginner – Intermediate (some basic knowledge of R will be an advantage)
We are expecting you to have basic data management skills in MS Excel.
If you are a beginner to R, we strongly recommend that you join a free R familiarisation session on Thursday 13 March 2-5 pm. In that session, we will also support you to ensure you have installed everything correctly.
We will also provide some guidance for semi-structured self-paced learning (an introduction to R Studio and R). You can do this in your own time before the course starts.
Places:
18 places
Hardware and software requirements:
You will need a laptop or desktop computer. A second external screen will be an advantage for those participating online (but is not essential). Having a webcam is desirable (but not essential). If you plan to participate from an open-plan office or noisy environment, please wear headphones with a built-in microphone.
We will use MS Teams to deliver this interactive online course.
We will do lots of practical exercises, so you can continue working on your skills immediately after the training course. You will need to install this software before the course starts.
- R Studio Desktop (free open-source software)
- R programming language (version 4.4 & upwards; free open source software)
We will explain in the joining instructions how to download and install the software.
Accommodation:
For those attending the course in-person, the cost of accommodation is not included in the course fee. Please see our guide for accommodation near our Edinburgh site (updated 12/10/22).
Course leaders:
Audric Vigier, Information & Data Systems Analyst, UKCEH
Shona Ferguson, Research Associate Environmental Data Scientist, UKCEH
Previous course participants said:
The hybrid delivery of the in-person and interactive online course in May 2024 had 99% positive feedback.
"The course handbook is great and will be a very useful reference tool. The three course trainers were incredibly knowledgeable and worked hard to include everyone and answer questions. David was great, so organised, calm, engaging and included everyone whether in the room or online. Audric and Shona were also fab, very attentive and so on-the-ball! Quickly answering questions and helping out - brilliant teamwork " (Jo Milborrow, Biodiversity Information Service for Powys and Brecon Beacons National Park, May 2024)
"Very clear explanations throughout. Great course organisation. Amazing provision of practical solutions for those asking questions" (learner, May 2024)
"Using 'real' datasets rather than R's training data made the knowledge more applicable and relevant as well as adding to my confidence. I enjoyed the instructor's solutions to learners questions and that we went over these together." (learner, May 2024)
“I enjoyed it all - as a beginner it was good to get the basics and the overview of what's possible. The pace was very good - very calm speaking that I could keep up with.” (Sarah Grinsted, Natural England, May 2023)
“The exercises in the breakout rooms really helped to apply the information from the course and make sure you understood it.” (course participant, May 2023)
“There were lots of opportunities to ask questions and get a good understanding, the environment was good for an online format.” (course participant, May 2023)
“Clear explanations. easy to follow structure. all the instructors were very helpful and approachable. Thank you! “ (course participant, September 2022)
“I liked the fact that there were lots of exercises to do which gave us the chance to apply some of the techniques we'd learnt throughout the course” (course participant, September 2022)