Apply large language models and AI tools to qualitative research in this intensive one-day workshop led by Kenneth Benoit (Professor of Computational Social Science, SMU) and Seraphine Maerz (Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne). Through guided demonstrations and hands-on exercises you’ll learn an accessible, rigorous R-based approach using packages like quallmer and ellmer to annotate text, images, audio, video, PDFs and tabular data; connect to proprietary (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic) and open-source (e.g., Ollama) models; design reliable prompts; assess ethics and data-security trade-offs; validate AI outputs against human coding; and build reproducible, publication-ready pipelines — all with no prior R experience required. Sessions are livestreamed via Zoom, include annotated code and prepared datasets, and all materials, recordings and a monitored Q&A forum are available for 30 days after the seminar; a certificate of completion is provided (ECTS equivalents noted for European students). Bring a laptop with R and RStudio installed if you want to follow along, or attend asynchronously — register to secure your place. disciplines #HealthSciences #PoliticalScience #SocialSciences #Education #ComputerScience #DataScience #SocialTheory #InformationScience #Ethics #Sociology #R #RStudio #Research #ResearchTraining #Instats

Join our advanced seminar for PhD students and academic researchers at the intersection of laboratory results, EHRs, LLMs, and causal inference to advance AI-driven clinical reasoning—learn how to integrate lab trajectories with language models to support diagnostic hypotheses and patient-facing explanations while meeting the epistemic demands of reproducibility, temporality, and domain shift. You’ll gain practical skills in extracting and normalizing lab data, constructing time-indexed causal DAGs, designing counterfactual evaluation protocols, applying prompt engineering and constrained generation to reduce hallucination, and using clinically informed evaluation metrics (calibration, discrimination, subgroup robustness, temporal alignment, and sensitivity analyses) to build reproducible pipelines that combine structured labs and free-text. The seminar emphasizes publishable, methodologically rigorous research with translational impact, leaving participants with explanation-fidelity metrics, human-AI and ethical assessment frameworks, and a clear research agenda plus templates for experimental designs, manuscripts, and grants. All livestreams are via Zoom; recordings, slides, inputs/outputs, and data are available for 30 days after the seminar (and on-demand access is available any time after enrollment), a Q&A forum will be monitored for 30 days, and participants receive an Instats certificate of completion (ECTS-equivalent points shown for European students). #ArtificialIntelligence #Biomedicine #CausalInference #ComputerScience #DataAnalytics #DataScience #HealthSciences #ClinicalorLaboratoryScience #Medicine #Ethics #InformationScience #BiomedicalEngineering #Research #ResearchTraining #Instats

Evaluating causality is increasingly critical across disciplines — join Professor Melvyn Weeks (University of Cambridge) for an intensive two-day, eight-session online workshop that blends modern machine learning with rigorous econometric methods to help PhD students, academics and research professionals move from correlation to credible causal inference. Topics include distinguishing prediction from causation, high-dimensional regularisation (lasso, double lasso), Double Selection and Double Debiased ML (DDML) motivated by the Frisch–Waugh–Lovell theorem, tree- and forest-based treatment-effect estimation, and linking classical identification strategies to ML; hands-on notebooks, sample data and workflows in Stata, R and Python are provided so you can replicate and apply techniques to your own research. All sessions are livestreamed via Zoom, recordings and materials are available for 30 days after the seminar (with a monitored Q&A forum), and participants receive an Instats certificate of completion (ECTS-equivalent points shown for European students where applicable). Building on material from Professor Weeks’s July 2025 course (with Jeff Wooldridge), this workshop offers a practical and conceptual upgrade to your methodological toolkit — spaces are limited, learn more or enroll via Instats. #SocialSciences #HealthSciences #NaturalSciences #SocialTheory #ComputerScience #Economics #Statistics #DataScience #ChatGPT #Python #R #Stata #Research #ResearchTraining #Instats

Join renowned UCLA professor and Mplus author Bengt Muthén for a focused seminar on the relationship between multilevel models and single‑level multivariate models in Mplus, with a practical emphasis on Latent Transition Analysis (LTA). Through worked examples you’ll learn foundational LTA concepts, the role of logistic regression, handling longitudinal data with random intercepts, using multiple indicators, multilevel factor analysis, and two innovative approaches to multilevel latent class analysis—illustrated with real applications such as mood and dating studies. The livestream is delivered via Zoom with take‑home skill challenges; all recordings, program input/output, data and slides are available for 30 days after the seminar (a monitored chat forum is open for questions), and an on‑demand option is available any time; participants receive an Instats certificate of completion (ECTS equivalent noted for European students). Originally presented as Mplus Web Talk 1 on statmodel.com—visit statmodel.com to register or access the on‑demand materials. #SocialSciences #HealthSciences #Education #Statistics #Mplus #Research #ResearchTraining #Instats

Join a 4-day non-coding workshop on hypergraphs and hyperlink prediction led by Professor Moses Boudourides (Data Science Graduate Program, Northwestern University) — designed for PhD students, academics, and researchers who want to model and predict multi-node group interactions beyond pairwise links. You’ll get a deep conceptual grounding and practical understanding of topics such as hypergraph reconstruction, hidden hyperedge prediction, temporal forecasting, similarity-based heuristics, embedding approaches, and hypergraph neural networks (plus spectral methods like CHESHIRE), with real-world application examples from social networks, bioinformatics, finance, and transportation. All sessions are livestreamed via Zoom, with recordings, slides and seminar materials available for 30 days after the course, an expert-monitored Q&A forum for 30 days, and an Instats certificate of completion (ECTS Equivalent shown for eligible European students). Enhance your research toolkit and learn how to apply cutting-edge hypergraph methods to complex collective processes — register or learn more today. #Engineering #ComputerScience #Business #SocialSciences #DigitalHumanities #HealthSciences #InformationScience #Statistics #Mathematics #DataScience #Bioinformatics #Python #Research #ResearchTraining #Instats

Join an intensive one-day workshop with Kenneth Benoit (SMU) and Seraphine Maerz (University of Melbourne) to learn an accessible, rigorous approach to AI-powered qualitative analysis using R: see how the new R packages quallmer and ellmer translate LLM capabilities into practical tools for annotating text, images, audio, video, PDFs and tabular data—no deep programming or ML expertise required. Through guided demos and hands-on exercises you will connect to proprietary models (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic) and open-source options (e.g., Ollama), learn to design reliable prompts, build reproducible RStudio pipelines suitable for publication, and address ethics, privacy, model-choice trade-offs and validation with human coders. The seminar is highly practical and inclusive (no prior R required); bring a laptop with R/RStudio to follow along or attend asynchronously—recordings, code, datasets and a monitored Q&A will be available for 30 days after the event, and participants receive an Instats certificate (ECTS equivalent where shown). Ideal for PhD students and professional researchers looking for a flexible, transparent alternative to built-in AI features in qualitative software—register or learn more today. disciplines #HealthSciences #PoliticalScience #SocialSciences #Education #ComputerScience #DataScience #SocialTheory #InformationScience #Statistics #R #RStudio #Research #ResearchTraining #Instats

Join our half-day online seminar to master how to find clinical trials and unpublished results across trial registers (ClinicalTrials.gov, WHO ICTRP, Cochrane CENTRAL), clinical study reports and regulatory sources (Health Canada, EMA, FDA), and to learn practical strategies for searching and documenting your work; Carol and Julie—each with 30 years’ experience in evidence synthesis—will guide clinicians, information specialists/librarians and researchers through the complexities of ongoing and completed trial information, preprints, HTA sources and more. The workshop is delivered live via Zoom, with recordings, slides and materials (and a monitored Q&A forum) available for 30 days after the seminar, and attendees receive an Instats certificate of completion (ECTS equivalent shown where applicable). Register at https://instats.org/course/key-search-issues-finding-trials-using1 and save 10% when you book this seminar together with "Search Filters for Evidence Synthesis." #Healthcare #HealthSciences #InformationScience #Medicine #Multidisciplinary #Nursing #PharmaceuticalScience #Biostatistics #Epidemiology #PublicHealth #ClinicalorLaboratoryScience #Pharmacology #Research #ResearchTraining #Instats

Fine-tuning large language models is now an essential research method for extracting reliable, reproducible insights from domain-specific texts — join Dr. Seraphine Maerz (University of Melbourne) for a one-day, research-focused online workshop designed for PhD students, faculty and professional researchers across Health Sciences, Political Science and the Social Sciences. The day mixes concise conceptual overviews with hands-on Jupyter/Colab notebooks (Python and R/RStudio; no prior programming required) so you’ll leave with reproducible code, evaluation pipelines and clear decision rules for when to fine-tune versus using prompt engineering; topics include fine-tuning methods, LoRA for parameter-efficient tuning, classification heads, data preparation and annotation, evaluation and error analysis, reproducibility best practices, and ethical considerations. The seminar is livestreamed via Zoom, with recordings, notebooks and all materials available for 30 days after the event (plus a moderated Q&A forum for 30 days), and participants receive an Instats certificate of completion (ECTS-equivalent points shown for European students where applicable). Interested? Enroll or learn more to secure your spot and take your text-analysis toolkit to the next level. disciplines #HealthSciences #PoliticalScience #SocialSciences #InformationScience #Statistics #ComputerScience #DataScience #Ethics #GoogleColab #Jupyter #Python #R #RStudio #Research #ResearchTraining #Instats

St. Louis Community College enrollment for fall 2025 shows a 10% increase from the previous year. In fall 2024, STLCC enrolled 15,649 students across its campuses and education centers. For fall 2025, that number rose to 17,236. STLCC Chancellor Jeff L. Pittman, PhD, attributes the increase to creation and expansion of programs that prepare students […]