Session 1 · Introduction to Text as Data

Objective

By the end of class, you can distinguish a broad topic from an answerable text-as-data question. You can also describe what belongs in a corpus and organize the first version of your course repository.

Before class

• Complete the Start here setup checklist.
• Bring a laptop with Orange, RStudio, and GitHub Desktop installed.
• Confirm that you can sign in to GitHub and DataCamp.
• You do not need to choose a hackathon topic yet.

No assessed assignment is due before this class. Demo 1 is due Sep. 24 at 17:00. Swirl and the first DataCamp block are due Sep. 25 at 09:15, when Session 2 begins. See the Week 2 assignments →

Opening survey

The first survey records attendance and asks a few baseline questions about research questions, corpora, and prior experience. There are no right answers and no preparation is expected.

Device-free lecture

We will work through four decisions.

1. What is the substantive question?
2. Which texts could supply relevant evidence?
3. What is the unit of comparison?
4. What would the resulting pattern still fail to establish?

The lecture introduces corpus boundaries, provenance, and the practical meaning of FAIR. It does not attempt a survey of digital humanities.

Laptop demonstration

The demonstration creates a private GitHub repository and applies the course folder structure. It also covers the README and data provenance record before verifying the first push on github.com.

Standard track

Use GitHub Desktop to create the initial repository and verify the structure.

BA2 review track

Complete this assignment in R. Orange is not permitted for assessed work. Initialize an RStudio Project and add a small session-01.R script that creates a three-row data frame and prints it.

Demo 1 · Repository foundations

Due Sep. 24 at 17:00

Upload the following items.

• A root README.md naming the course, owner, purpose, and folder structure.
• data/README.md with source, access, license, and “do not upload” placeholders.
• The six demos/ folders and r-learning/ folder.
• A .gitignore that excludes .DS_Store, .Rhistory, .Rproj.user/, credentials, and local data where appropriate.
• At least two meaningful commits visible on GitHub.
• BA2 review students also upload the RStudio Project and session-01.R.

Before you submit

• The repository is private and scdenney is a collaborator.
• Every required folder exists and opens on github.com.
• The README tells a new reader what the repository contains.
• No passwords, personal data, restricted data, or large corpora are committed.
• The final commit is pushed and visible on github.com.

This demo is graded for checklist completion. Prose quality is not assessed.