add the readme

README.md

+
+# Intermediate workshop on Reproducible Research in R <img src="images/apple-touch-icon.png" align="right" height=100/>
+
+[![License: CC BY 4.0](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-CC%20BY%204.0-lightgrey.svg)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
+[![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-MIT-yellow.svg)](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
+
+## Description
+
+Reproducibility and open scientific practices are increasingly being requested
+or required of scientists and researchers, but training on these practices has 
+not kept pace. This course intends to help bridge that gap and covers the
+fundamentals and workflow of data analysis in R.
+
+This repository contains the lesson, lecture, and assignment material for the
+course, including the website source files and other associated course
+administration files. 
+
+For more detail on the course, check out the [syllabus](https://r-cubed-intermediate.rostools.org/syllabus).
+
+## Instructional Design
+
+The lectures and lessons in this course are designed to be presented primarily
+with a participatory live-coding approach. This involves an instructor typing
+and running code in [RStudio](https://www.rstudio.com/) in front of the class,
+while the class follows along using their own computers. Challenges are
+interspersed in the lesson material, allowing participants to collaboratively
+work on smaller coding problems for a few minutes. All lesson materials are
+provided ahead of time on the course website for participants to refer to during
+lectures. Throughout the course, participants work in small groups to complete
+the exercises together.
+
+## Lesson content
+
+The teaching material is found mainly in the main project folder:
+
+- `00-syllabus.Rmd`: Contains the syllabus and the schedule files.
+- Files starting with a number: 
+Contains the code-along teaching material, as well as
+associated links to the lecture slides. 
+
+The website is generated from [bookdown], 
+so follows the file and folder structure
+conventions from that package.
+
+[bookdown]: https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown/
+
+## Installing necessary packages
+
+Packages used and depended on for this course are included in the `DESCRIPTION`
+file. To install the packages, run this function in the root directory (where
+the `r-cubed-intermediate.Rproj` file is located:
+
+```r
+# install.packages("remotes")
+remotes::install_deps()
+```
+
+## Contributing
+
+If you are interested in contributing to the course material, please refer to
+the [contributing guidelines](CONTRIBUTING.md). Please note that the
+project is released with a [Contributor Code of
+Conduct](CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md). By contributing to this project, you agree to
+abide by its terms.
+
+## Acknowledgements
+
+Much of the lesson material was taken and modified from multiple sources (most
+of which I've created, been involved in, or contributed to), including:
+
+- [UofTCoders Reproducible Quantitative Methods for EEB](https://uoftcoders.github.io/rcourse/) 
+(which I helped develop and is the inspiration and basis for this course)
+- [Software and Data Carpentry](https://carpentries.org/) workshop material
+- [UofTCoders material](https://uoftcoders.github.io/studyGroup/lessons/)
+and [AU CRU material](https://au-cru.github.io/site/material/),
+from the peer led and contributed lessons
+- Some material from my [*"Reproducible Quantitative Methods: Data analysis workflow using R"*](https://v1--dda-rcourse.netlify.com/)