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Computer Tools for Ecological Research

2 ECTS Kourou Year 2 Semester 3 Compulsory Tool 1

Content

This course is an introduction to various tools useful for processing ecological data, answering scientific questions and writing articles that meet international standards. Students will first become familiar with the R software, used with the RStudio interface. Other tools will then be introduced: R Markdow, Mendeley, LateX, Git and GitHub, for writing reports, finding and managing bibliography tracking code versions.

Learning outcomes

After completing the course, the student should be able to 1) use R to open a dataset, modify it, access specific parts of it, and write a new dataset, and analyze it with RStudio and link it with other tools (e.g., C++ or Git), 2) write a report with R Markdown, 3) use a software to handle the bibliography, add papers and other types of scientific reports, and add citations to it in their own reports, and 4) use a version control system to handle different versions of a project. Access and submit projects on GitHub.

Teaching and learning methods

The course is entirely provided in the classroom (16h).

Type of assessment

  • Group
  • Written assignment
  • Students will complete a project in groups of two or three in which they will analyze a dataset to answer a scientific question in tropical ecology using the tools provided in this course.

Institution(s)

  • Location: Kourou
  • ECTS granting: AgroParisTech
  • Organisation: AgroParisTech

Webpage(s)

Coordinator(s)

Camille Salmon

Dr Camille Salmon

  • Lecturer (PhD)
  • AgroParisTech, Kourou France