Even though it’s just February, this is a great time to think about your summer research plans! Whether you are working with a Swarthmore College faculty member, or you are a faculty member who’s recruiting summer students, now is ideal for getting some preparation in place to make the summer research more effective, and ready to go, right out of the gate.
Preparation
First, whether you are faculty or student, it’s good to have conversations now with your prospective summer Research Assistants/Faculty Advisor. Make sure you have a plan for what tools are going to be used in the lab, and in the research. Is there specific software that folks need proficiency with? Are there opportunities to take advantage of College resources to gain skills? Or to leverage resources available through ITS?
Learning to use software
For learning software, we have a site license for LinkedinLearning! This enables you to access online training for everything from the Adobe Suite (tools like the desgin software Adobe Illustrator, Photo and image editing with Photoshop, graphic and poster design with InDesign, document creation with Acrobat, or video editing with Premiere Pro), to Microsoft Office (think data management and analyses with Excel, writing effectively with Word, or better presentations with Powerpoint) to productivity based learning like “Getting Things Done” to be more effective with your time. You can also find general courses on mapping and GIS, or Python programming.
Along with training through LinkedinLearning, many software vendors also support their own online training and tutorials. Through our licenses, there is a vast array of training available to Swarthmore College folks to learn about various ESRI tools affiliated with the ArcGIS suite of products, from ArcGIS Online, for web-based mapping, to ArcGIS StoryMaps, to the more advanced ArcGIS Pro desktop application, to other tools that can build data presentation sites, or interactive survey tools. To access ArcGIS related training, or to download the desktop ArcGIS Pro software, you just need to log into the College’s ArcGIS Online site with your College credentials, for access to all of these tools. Then select your name in the upper right of the screen and select the Training option from the drop-down menu. This is also where you can access the Living Atlas, which provides access to many sources of satellite and other mapping data from around the world, that can be used in maps you develop.
Similarly, if you’ll be conducting generalized surveys, the College’s license for Qualtrics includes access to the Qualtrics bootcamps and training, where you can get detailed answers to how-do-I-do-that type questions. Just log into the Swarthmore College Qualtrics site, and click on the question mark in the upper right of the screen. There you’ll find quick answers, access to the XM Basecamp, and to the XM Community where folks from around the world have addressed questions.
The College also has a limited number of licenses for the online DataCamp training resource. Contact us if you’d like to learn in greater depth about using R for your statistical analyses, or need to learn Python in greater depth. The basic intro courses on these topics are free to access, but going into greater depth requires a license from us. This resource is ideal for faculty who’d like to move away from the very expensive and proprietary SPSS data analysis tool, and to learn more about work with the open source R analysis environment in a way that provides immediate training feedback as you develop your skills.
Tools for research
The College also supports a number of resources through ITS that might be valuable to folks doing research. We have, for example two quadcopter drones, one of which as an infrared sensitive camera that could be valuable for energy analysis of buildings and objects from the air. The visible light drone has a great camera for drone mapping, if that’s useful to you. Since we’re in a restricted FAA controlled flight area near Philadelphia International Airport, you’ll need to coordinate with ITS for support of these systems.
Analysis tools
For data analysis, we have not just the training, but access to R-Studio, Posit Cloud (R Studio in the cloud), licenses for JMP, Stata, Atlas.ti, SPSS, Matlab, and other data analysis tools. We also have access to high-powered computational resources through our Firebird High-Performance Computing Cluster, for those computationally intensive analyses, large data sets and the resources to access sponsored hight performance computing centers around the country.
More physical support
We also have physical cameras, lighting and video equipment that can be checked out from the Creative Media Commons for use in College related work. This is great when you need to document your work, gather images or video for presenting it to others, or for use in your research. Even if you find that your cell phone camera is adequate, you may want help with image manipulation in Photoshop, or video editing support. We have significant expertise in the Creative Media Commons, now in it’s new space in the renovated Martin Hall first floor. There you can not only get help with your media work, but you can also access a recording space to create a podcast about your work, or record a voiceover for your Youtube or other social media video production!
Preserving data and presenting
Ideally, before you’ve begun to collect data, you have a data management plan. We can help with that too. We can set up Google Drive spaces for your lab, so that files are not lost when folks graduate or leave the College. And if that’s not enough, we have access to AWS storage and more, in support of your work. We can help you structure a system for preserving your data in the right way, not just on random flash drives that degrade over time!
When you’re ready to present your work, we can help you print a poster, and we offer workshops in effective poster design to help you make your presentation as effective as possible. If you want to present in other ways, we can help with that too! Contact us!