Workshop Requirements

NB: We are assuming that everyone will bring their own laptop. No laptops are able to be provided to attendees for this course.

The workshop will require a working installation of

To ensure your R packages are up to date, please follow the instructions below. Help is available, should you need it during the half hour before the workshop commences, or via email.

Day Time Location
Tuesday 2nd September 8:30am - 9:00am Giumelli Learning Studio 4 (2.10), EZONE Building, University of Western Australia

It is essential that you have access to a working installation before the workshop begins. No time will be taken during the workshop to assist with this and you will be significantly disadvantaged should you not have a working installation prior to attendance. Importantly, installing R on a managed device can be unpredictably difficult or easy, depending on the restrictions applied by your systems administrators. Whilst not strictly an issue with R these restrictions can cause problems during installation. Please assume you have a difficult device and prepare early.

If you require assistance, we are more than happy to help resolve any issues. Otherwise, please email

R Installation

R and RStudio are separate pieces of software that are installed separately. RStudio will check for a working R installation, so please install R first.

Self-Managed Laptop

Ubuntu/Mint users can follow instructions provided here.

For Windows/OSX users, R can be downloaded and installed from CRAN. Please choose the version for your operating system (OS).

RStudio can be downloaded and installed Posit with options for most operating systems.

Managed Devices

Both R and RStudio should be available in the Software Centre provided by your institution. Please use these versions.

Using a Remote Installation

If the previous two options are not available to you, all local universities provide a remote desktop with access to R/RStudio. It may be an older version, but will still be suitable for the workshop These options are often known as ADAPT, VirtualApps or Citrix. Please consider exploring these options if you need to.

If this is the best option for you, please place the installation code below directly into R (or the Console panel within RStudio), hitting Enter and letting the installation take place. A failure of this installation is very unlikely, but if this does occur, please use the Posit Cloud as instructed below.

Using the Posit Cloud

If all previous options have failed for you, a cloud instance is available from Posit as a last resort. Almost all of the workshop will work successfully here, with the known exception being the creation of an R Project. Everything else will run very well.

Once you have registered, go to Your Workspace and select New Project from the menu at the top RHS of the page, choosing “New R Studio Project”. In the Console section of the screen, please run the installation code below. This should not fail as Posit has developed both the tidyverse and rmarkdown. The installation code has also been tested on this system.

Installing Packages

Once you have R installed, please open R using the icon. Linux users should open a terminal and type R. You should then see something which looks similar to the following. If you’re familiar with using R in RStudio, then please just use what you’re already familiar with.

Please copy and paste the code highlightewd below where you see the > symbol, then hit the Enter key to begin the package installation.

install.packages(c("tidyverse", "rmarkdown", "pander", "ggthemes", "palmerpenguins"))

You will need an internet connection and the installation may take up to 10 minutes. A large amount of text will scroll past you as the installation takes place.