UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Beginning Feb. 3, the Research Informatics and Publishing department at Penn State University Libraries will offer four introductory workshops on data analytics and visualization topics, including survey data analysis with Tableau and tools commonly used for business analytics and big data analytics such as Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Participants will have the opportunity to apply techniques to examples, discover resources necessary to get started with the tools and learn about additional resources available at the University Libraries for continued self-learning.
Workshops are free and open to Penn State undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty and staff. No previous experience is required for introductory-level workshops.
All workshops will be held virtually via Zoom. Advance registration is required; registration and additional information is provided at the link for each session below.
If you need additional information, contact Research Informatics and Publishing at repub@psu.edu.
Workshop schedule
Introduction to Power BI for Data Analytics and Visualization — Feb. 3, 1–2:30 p.m.
This workshop will provide an overview of Power BI, one of the most popular data analytics and visualization tools on the market. The introductory session is designed to walk users through accessing the tool, using some common visual templates for data analysis and visualization, and sharing visualization online for collaboration, plus learning resources. No prior experience is required.
Introduction to Big Data Analytics in the Cloud: Azure, AWS, GCP — Feb. 10, 1–3 p.m.
The workshop will introduce each of the listed cloud platforms and some ready-to-use tools for big data analytics and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), such as document AI, predictive analytics, and image analysis for pattern recognition. The workshop will include hands-on examples. To follow along with the demos for the session, a cloud account (free) with each service provider will be needed: AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Introduction to Data Analytics and Visualization with Tableau — Feb. 17, 1–2:30 p.m.
This is a great workshop for those who have never used Tableau. Users will learn about the importance of data visualization and how to start working with Tableau, then follow examples on how to connect to a data set and create and share their first visualizations. They will discover differences between Tableau Public and Tableau Desktop and learn about some of the training resources available.
Introduction to Survey Data Analysis with Tableau — Feb. 24, 1–2:30 p.m.
This workshop is perfect for anyone who would like to learn about analyzing survey data with Tableau. In this session we will analyze a file generated from the Qualtrics online survey tool. Users will learn about the challenges they might experience when trying to load a Qualtrics data file in its original form into Tableau. They will also learn about using Tableau Prep to model their data to overcome some of these challenges.