MwALT 2025 Workshop - Preparation
MwALT 2025 Workshop: Visualizing Quantitative Data for Presentation and Publication
Hello! If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you are planning to attend a MwALT 2025 pre-conference workshop on data visualization on Thursday, October 8.
For the workshop, you’ll need to bring a laptop computer.
To ensure that we can spend our time together focused on learning about and practicing data visualization, please make sure you have the following four tasks completed before the workshop begins.
If you run into any trouble or need assistance, you can email me at disbell@hawaii.edu
Task 1: Install R on your laptop
If you do not already have R installed on your laptop, you can download it at this link: https://cloud.r-project.org/
Click the link for R that matches your operating system
Follow the instructions on the page to download the file, then install it
If you run into any difficulties with Task 1 or Task 2, see this helpful link: https://rstudio-education.github.io/hopr/starting.html
Task 2: Install RStudio on your laptop
If you do not already have RStudio installed on your laptop, you can download it at this link: https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/
Click the link under “2: Install RStudio”
The website should detect your operating system automatically, but you can also scroll down to see a list of download links for different operating systems
After you download the software, install it on your machine
Task 3: Install R Packages
R takes advantage of many add-on packages that provide additional and enhanced functions.
We will use three packages in the workshop: tidyverse, GGally, and easystats.
Before we can use them, we need to install them. Open RStudio and look at the ‘Packages’ tab in the bottom-right panel. Click ‘Install’
Then, type the names of the three packages (tidyverse, GGally,easystats) and click ‘Install’:
You’ll see some activity in the bottom-left panel of RStudio labeled ‘Console’. After a couple of minutes, your packages will be installed.
If you have trouble getting this done before the workshop, don’t worry too much - we should be able to resolve the problem quickly.
Task 4: Download Data for the Workshop
We’ll be primarily relying on two sets of data for hands-on practice: some Duolingo English Test scores (from Crowther et al., 2023), some L2 Korean speech self-assessment data (from Isbell & Lee, 2022), and some data from a local placement test (featured in, e.g., Nishizawa, 2023).
Download these files at the links below:
After you download the files, I recommend creating a folder on your desktop called ‘MwALT2025’ and putting them there.
If you have trouble with this task, I can also email the files to you.