Add a section to the intro episode on Getting Help and Generative AI

[nickyjgarland]

Towards the end of the first episode (01-intro-to-r.Rmd), I've added a section called 'Other Ways to get help', which covers content on the use of Generative AI, among other sources. The text included has been discussed and agreed upon on by the Carpentries community.

This section follows on from a more general section on how to get help using R and Rstudio, building upon this foundational knowledge.

The addition of this content is based on conversations that have been made in the Carpentries about adding content on Generative AI and has been rolled out for a number of existing lesson. Links to relevant discussion are provided below.

• Carpentries Blog post about incorporation content about AI on lessons
• Slack message about GenAI updates to Carpentries lessons
• Original PR in SW Plotting and Programming in Python

[github-actions]

Thank you!

Thank you for your pull request 😃

🤖 This automated message can help you check the rendered files in your submission for clarity. If you have any questions, please feel free to open an issue in {sandpaper}.

If you have files that automatically render output (e.g. R Markdown), then you should check for the following:

• 🎯 correct output
• 🖼️ correct figures
• ❓ new warnings
• ‼️ new errors

Rendered Changes

🔍 Inspect the changes: https://github.com/LibraryCarpentry/lc-r/compare/md-outputs..md-outputs-PR-123

The following changes were observed in the rendered markdown documents:

 01-intro-to-r.md  |   56 +
 config.yaml (new) |   85 ++
 md5sum.txt        |    2 +-
 renv.lock (new)   | 4010 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 4 files changed, 4152 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

What does this mean?

If you have source files that require output and figures to be generated (e.g. R Markdown), then it is important to make sure the generated figures and output are reproducible.

This output provides a way for you to inspect the output in a diff-friendly manner so that it's easy to see the changes that occur due to new software versions or randomisation.

⏱️ Updated at 2025-07-03 15:52:58 +0000