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What they forgot to teach you about teaching R

2 Cherish day one

Don’t spend the first day going through the syllabus in detail, aim to get students to make their first meaningful data visualization in 10 minutes! This might sound impossible, and it probably is, if you start by installing R, and then RStudio, and then a bunch of packages, and making sure students have Git working on their computer. You could spend a whole class (or more) on this and not get to a point where every student has their local setup working in an ideal fashion.

Instead, use cloud-based access to RStudio. This could be via RStudio Cloud or an RStudio Server you set up locally at your institution.

2.1 Slides

To view the slides in full screen, click on the slides and then hit F on your keyboard.

2.2 Your turn

2.2.1 Do

  • First you’re the instructor:

    • Go out of the workspace for this workshop, and back to Your Workspace.
    • Create a new project and give it a name.
    • Create a template R Markdown document in the project and add/modify some content. Keep it simple!
    • Change the access level of the project so others can see it as well.
    • Grab the project URL and share it with someone in your breakout group.

  • Now you’re the student: Access your partner’s project as if you’re the student and they’re the instructor.

2.2.2 Discuss

What is one question you have about using RStudio Cloud (or other server based RStudio access for teaching) that wasn’t answered in this module?

2.3 More resources

Using RStudio Cloud for setting up your course: Accessing R in Data Science in a Box

Webinar: RStudio Cloud in the classroom

Çetinkaya-Rundel, Mine, and Colin Rundel. “Infrastructure and tools for teaching computing throughout the statistical curriculum.” The American Statistician 72.1 (2018): 58-65.