![](bg2.png)
2 COMPUTER SUPPORT
In this section we describe several types of
computing resources that were used to support the
research consortium effort.
2.1 Statistical Analysis Tools
We decided to primarily support three statistical
analysis tools, R (The R Project for Statistical
Computing, 2010), Microsoft Excel®, and SAS JMP
(JMP Software, 2010). We chose R because it is a
powerful, widely used, freeware environment and
SAS-JMP because of its ease of use and the fact that
it is supplied to all Virginia Tech students. We chose
Excel because many of the students already knew
how to perform basic tasks with it. These tools are
used for thesis and dissertation research by students
and research by faculty. These tools are also used to
support classes.
To support training in R, we developed several
screencast videos with CamStudio, containing
tutorials. These videos were to be uploaded to
Youtube, but due to its lack of video quality, we
finally chose to use Google Video. The R training
videos on Google Video are:
1. Introduction. This first video tutorial covers
how to download R, variables and simple data
types, operations, functions, and how to get
help within R.
2. Complex Data Types. The second tutorial
covers the basics of creation and modification
of vectors, lists, data frames, and tables in R.
3. Indexes. The third tutorial covers indexing
vectors, lists, data frames, tables, and indexing
by conditions.
4. Data Import & Export. The forth tutorial
covers how to import different types of data
structures both from files and the clipboard.
Exporting data is also covered.
As of October 13, 2009, in a year and a half of
availability, these videos has been watched 350
times and downloaded 9 times.
Many places in our website are dedicated to
these statistical analysis tools, with references to
books and other tutorials, as well as other pointers to
resource material.
2.2 Website
A website was created containing information about
research courses, funding sources, cross-discipline
research, and tools and methods for research. It can
be found at http://rmc.ncr.vt.edu. The blogging
platform WordPress (WordPress > Blog Tool and
Publishing platform, 2010) was used for this
website. It allowed us to add information and
resources so that it is easy for readers to keep track
of new content. Blogs are thought to be useful for
this kind of situation as users can easily post
feedback comments and also follow other
comments. We chose WordPress because it is one of
the easiest and most used free platforms. Moreover,
the website supports RSS (Really Simple
Syndication) syndication, allowing readers to be
instantly notified of new content either in their e-
mail or feed reader. At a given time, on average, 10
users are subscribed to this feed.
Despite being focused on the management,
categorization and display of new content,
WordPress also allowed us to have static
information (i.e. lists of courses, funding sources,
etc.) always visible.
Another point in favor of a platform like this, is
the possibility of having multiple users adding new
content at the same time which we considered a
major advantage.
The website is running on a regular desktop
computer, with a standard freeware LAMP platform,
using Ubuntu Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
Being the most common platform on the Internet,
there is plenty of documentation and its maintenance
does not require much effort.
As of October 13, 2009, the website has been
visited 6,897 times by 4,223 unique visitors, who
displayed a total of 17,782 pages.
2.2.1 Mindmaps
In order to organize the information and make
navigation easy for the user, we developed several
mindmaps using FreeMind (FreeMind – free mind
mapping software, 2010). Figure 1 shows a
mindmap of the research resources and information
available. Each of the topics in the mindmap is
hotlinked to the relevant section in the website.
2.2.2 Forum
It was clear from the beginning that the purpose of
the consortium was not just for its members to share
resources, but also to debate and ask for help on any
research-related topic. Of course, this is crucial from
the student point of view, so we later decided to
incorporate a web forum. It allowed us to discuss
topics about statistics, writing, joint research groups
and some others, as shown in Figure 2.
COMPUTER SUPPORT FOR A CROSS-DISCIPLINE RESEARCH CONSORTIUM
155