Introduction to R

This course will be held in English

Introduction to R

The R programming language is written by and for (data)scientists as a powerful tool for data science, statistics, and data visualization. R is free and open source, which means professionals around the world are continuously updating and adding functionality. With R, you can transform and investigate your raw data to gain actionable insights that drive intelligent decision-making and innovation.

Who Should Attend?

This introduction course is for everyone who wants to (re)learn the basics of the programming language R needed for data handling. This is useful for those new to R, or for those who have worked with R but never got the chance to get a good grasp on the basics themselves.

Prerequisites

None, but an idea of what you would like to do with R would be nice.

Please note R has a steep learning curve. Expect you will need 2-4 hours between sessions to prepare for the next one and plan accordingly. Please be kind to yourself and allow yourself at least 48 hours to complete the course.

Content

In this beginner's course, you will be guided through the basics of importing data, cleaning and restructuring data, visualizing and summarizing your data, and finally applying statistical models to your data.

What do you learn?

✅ Introduction to R and R Studio
✅ R Essentials / Basics
✅ Reading data from files (using readr and openxlsx)
✅ Data transformations (using dplyr and tidyr)
✅ Exploratory data analysis: graphics (using ggplot2)
✅ Exploratory data analysis: despriptive statistics
✅ Statistical tests (how to run the tests, not how to interpret them)
✅ What's more (other useful packages and more classical programming)

Result

At the end of the course, you will not only be able to work with R, but you will also be able to expand your knowledge in your specific field.

Interactive Learning Experience

This course relies heavily on highly interactive (online or hybrid) sessions where we review what you have done in the reader. During a review the teacher will share his screen and go through the code asking you by voting and chatting to find the error or complete the code. These reviews are used to rehearse material, show tips and tricks, warn for common mistakes, explain error messages, show how to use the helpfiles and the programme (IDE) in general, and overall to motivate you to keep up the pace. Participants report they are highly involved during these sessions and the course is consistently highly evaluated. On average this course is rated with an 8.2 (10% gives a 10!) by students, PhD’s and other employees alike.

Date, time and location

Below you will find the dates and times of the upcoming courses. The content of these courses remains the same each time.

If these dates do not suit you and you would like to be notified of future courses, please contact the coordinator, Theo van Mourik (t.j.van.mourik@rug.nl).

November 2025: 3 week course

All sessions are online, take 4 hours and take 3-4 hours of preparation each.
All presentations will be given via the Kaltura classroom (no account needed) and can be followed online. All presentations will be recorded and recordings will be available for about 6 months after the course.
You will receive a certificate of attendance for attending 5 of 6 sessions or (if you prefer) after completing a final assignment.

Session	Date (time 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.)	Preparation
1	Tue 11 Nov	Install R and R studio or start the programmes in the UWP or VRW
2	Fri 14 Nov	Ch 1 – 2.7 Intro and Basics
3	Tue 18 Nov	Ch 2.8 – H 3 Basics and import Data
4	Fri 21 Nov	Ch 4 Working with tables
5	Tue 25 Nov	Ch 5 Graphs
6	Fri 28 Nov	Ch 6 – 8 Descriptives, tests, programming

March 2026: 12 week evening course

All sessions last 2 hours on Tuesday evenings from 19:00-21:00 and require 1-2 hours of preparation each.
All presentations will be given via the online Kaltura Classroom (no account needed) and can be followed online. All presentations will be recorded and recordings will be available for about 6 months after the course.
You’ll receive a certificate of attendance for attending 9 of 12 sessions or (if you prefer) after completing a final assignment. The certificate states a workload of 48 hours.
Each week we’ll join online on Tuesday evenings.

Session	Date (time 7 - 9 p.m.)	Preparation
1*	Tue 3 March	Install R and R studio or start the programmes in the UWP or VRW
2	Tue 10 March	Ch 1 - 2.3 Intro andBasic Vectors
3	Tue 17 March	Ch 2.8 Data Frames, Factors and Formulas
4	Tue 24 March	Ch 2 - 3.1 Read and Write CSV
5	Tue 31 March	Ch 3 (optional time to catch up)
6	Tue 7 April	Ch 4.4 Dplyr: Filter, Select and Summarize
7*	Tue 14 April	Ch 4 Tidyr: Join and Restructure Tables
8	Tue 21 April	Ch 5.4 Basic Design
No session	Tue 28 April & 5 May	May Holiday and Liberation Day
9	Tue 12 May	CH 5 Graphs with Extra's
10	Tue 19 May	Ch 6 Descriptives
11	Tue 26 May	Ch 7 Statistical Tests
12	Tue 2 June	Ch 8 Extra's and Programming

* Sessions 1 and 7 are hybrid. On those sessions you can still join online, but you can also join in the classroom at Zernike in Groningen (Mercator Building; 5415.0031).

June 2026: 3 week course

All sessions are online, take 4 hours and take 3-4 hours of preparation each.
All presentations will be given via the Kaltura classroom (no account needed) and can be followed online. All presentations will be recorded and recordings will be available for about 6 months after the course.
You will receive a certificate of attendance for attending 5 of 6 sessions or (if you prefer) after completing a final assignment.

Session	Date (time 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.)	Preparation
1	Tue 16 June	Install R and R studio or start the programmes in the UWP or VRW
2	Fri 19 June	Ch 1 – 2.7 Intro and Basics
3	Tue 23 June	Ch 2.8 – H 3 Basics and import Data
4	Fri 26 June	Ch 4 Working with tables
5	Tue 30 June	Ch 5 Graphs
6	Fri 3 July	Ch 6 – 8 Descriptives, tests, programming

Enrollment and course fee

Fill out this form to enroll

You can unenroll until 8 days prior to the first session.
Late enrollments are fine, but please also contact the coordinator to avoid the risk of being overlooked.
Participants will receive the course material via email a few days before the course starts.

For more information, you can email Theo van Mourik (t.j.van.mourik@rug.nl).

Prices for individuals

€100 BSc/MSc student at UG, other Dutch University or Hanze Hogeschool
€300 PhD-student at UG or other Dutch University
€650 Employee UG or other Dutch university/UMCG/Hanze Hogeschool
€650 UG Alumni
€1250 Other participants

Prices for groups

20 or more PhD’s €200 pp (minimum price of €4.000)

10 or more employees €400 pp (minimum price of €4.000)

20 or more employees €250 pp (minimum price of €5.000)

5 or more others €1.000 pp (minimum price of €5.000, we will also send a separate contract for this)

When enrolling a group of participants, you need to provide a single financial contact person/cost center number and the mailing addresses of all participants. You can enroll a group using the normal enrollment link.

You can also request a customized course and discuss dates, audience, and content. For more information mail Theo van Mourik (t.j.van.mourik rug.nl). This is also possible within the curriculum.

More information

Each Thursday from 13:00-17:00 you can also join the Research Support Hub for guided working. Check rug.nl/rshub for the location and available support those weeks.
For more information on this or similar courses, please mail the coordinator, Theo van Mourik (t.j.van.mourik rug.nl).

Last modified:20 October 2025 3.40 p.m.