Team Formation Sessions & Workshops

(Updated January 28, 2025)

Team Formation Sessions are an optional opportunity to form a team with other students, or to add additional members to your team. Additional members may be added to your team after your team is registered by contacting the DataFest organizers.

Team Formation Sessions will be held at the below listed times, using this Team Formation zoom link: 
Team Formation Zoom link
  

  • Monday, February 17; 4:00-5:00 pm (via Zoom)  
  • Tuesday, February 18; 4:00-5:00 pm (In person, Room: Pomerene 140)
  • Thursday, February 20; 4:00-5:00 pm (via Zoom)
 

New teams may register until the overall event capacity has been reached. Teams and team members who complete the registration after February 29 may not be eligible to receive a t-shirt, as the t-shirt order must be placed by February 29. 

Three skills workshops will be offered prior to the start of DataFest so participants can freshen up on their data analysis and data visualization skills before the competition begins. Additional details are available on the DataFest website: data-analytics.osu.edu/datafest/workshops.

Students must be registered in order to receive the workshops links to attend the workshops. If you register after the workshops, you will have access to the workshops' recordings posted on Carmen.
• Intro to R for DataFest: Monday, March 3, 2025; 6:00-7:00 pm 
• Advanced R for DataFest: Tuesday, March 4, 2025; 6:00-7:00 pm 
• Data Visualization in R for DataFest: Thursday, March 6, 2025; 6:00-7:00 pm 

If you require an accommodation such as live captioning to participate in this event, please contact Jennifer Wells at wells.102@osu.edu or Steephanson Anthonymuthu at anthonymuthu.1@osu.edu. Requests made two weeks before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the University will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.

 Questions can be directed to the DataFest organizers at DataFest@osu.edu. 
 

Installing R and RStudio

We encourage participants to bring a laptop to use during the workshops. If R and RStudio are not already installed on your laptop, we encourage you to install these programs before the workshops so you can follow along.

R can be downloaded for free here. It is available for both Windows and Mac (as well as Linux).

RStudio is a popular integrated development environment (IDE) for R that makes R a bit more user friendly. After installing R from the link above, you can download and install RStudio Desktop for free from here.

How to Give a Winning Presentation - Video

A video created by past DataFest participants will provide DataFest registrants with tips for creating a winning presentation. Presenting the results of your analysis is arguably the most important part of DataFest. You cannot win if you do not effectively and efficiently communicate the results of your analysis to the panel of judges!

Additional Resources

Resources are available for students who would like additional support preparing for the DataFest competition. We recommend these excellent free, online options:

Post-Datafest Resume Workshop

DataFest provides students with a great opportunity to engage in professional development. You will build a variety of skills during the event, such as oral and written communication, teamwork, data analysis, presenting information, critical thinking and problem-solving – all of which are significantly valued by employers. Attend this workshop to learn how to best present your Datafest experience on your resume and how to follow-up with any recruiters or corporate mentors you met during the event!
 
  • Date: TBD
  • Time: 5:00pm–6:00pm
  • Location: Zoom