Organization Demo: How to Organize Your Workspace

This page shows students how to organize their individual Data Skills Pathway workspace.

Each student workspace should be simple, clear, and updated regularly. The goal is to help students track progress, share questions, organize project materials, and communicate clearly with mentors.

Each student page should include:

• Student name and major
• Mentor name and contact information
• Project interest or project title
• Project question or problem
• Learning goals
• Data sources
• Tools used
• Weekly progress updates
• Papers, references, and Zotero / Google Scholar notes
• Figures, tables, scripts, notebooks, or outputs
• Questions or blockers
• Final product and next steps

Each week, students should document:

• What they completed
• What they learned
• What paper, figure, dataset, tool, or script they worked on
• What question or blocker they have
• What they tried before asking for help
• What they plan to do next

Use this format each week:

Date: YYYY-MM-DD

What I completed this week:

What I learned:

Paper, figure, dataset, tool, script, or output shared:

Question or blocker:

What I tried:

Next step:

• Data Skills Pathway Home Page
• Current and Potential Projects
• Student Workspace Template
• Google Scholar
• Zotero

• Google Scholar: find scientific papers
• Zotero: save papers and create references
• Python / Jupyter Notebook: analyze data and document workflows
• Excel / CSV tools: review, clean, and organize data
• GitHub / GitLab: manage code and versions, if used by the mentor
• Atmos Wiki: document project progress and link outputs

• Update your workspace every week.
• Use clear headings.
• Use dates in your updates.
• Link to files, scripts, notebooks, figures, and outputs when possible.
• Keep raw data separate from processed data.
• Do not overwrite old versions without keeping a record.
• Ask questions early when you are stuck.