Workshops

Purpose of the workshops

The FDS workshops are a crucial part of the course. They should help you to develop your understanding of ethics, visualisation, critical evaluation of case studies and statistical problems.

The principle of the workshops is that you learn actively by discussing and working with others in a group. As the late Informatics Professor Jon Oberlander​ said: "Conversation makes you smart". You will benefit most by undertaking the assigned task (see below) before the workshop, but even if you have not done the task, we encourage you to attend, as you will learn either by doing the task in the workshop, or from other students who have managed to do more.t

Some workshops are specifically designed to help you understand of how we assess coursework (in particular visualisation); other workshops should help with the exam.

Workshop logistics

Workshops will be held in weeks 3, 5, 7 and 9 of Semester 1 and weeks 2, 4 and 6 of Semester 2. In the week before the workshop we will usually give you a task to prepare for the workshop, e.g. reading or doing some exercises. You will find the task in that week's folder in Course Materials and linked from the Schedule.

Each workshop group has up to 40 students and 2 tutors. During the workshop, you'll be expected to work together in smaller groups around tables. The location and time of your workshop group is in your personal timetable.

Each table has its own monitor, and it's often helpful to have one member of the group sharing their laptop screen on the monitor. There are HDMI and VGA connectors to the monitor, but not other connectors. So, if you can, please bring a laptop and HDMI dongle with you to the workshop.  

Changing your workshop group

If you want to change your on-campus workshop group, please use the Timetabler Self Change function.

List of workshops

 

License
All rights reserved The University of Edinburgh