[R] Teaching R - In front of the computer?

[Christian Hennig]

Dear Roland,

I wrote an eight-pages manuscript with basic commands and instructions
to use the help system and gave the students series of many small
exercises. For further concepts such as matrix computations, index
manipulations, coercion, I gave short presentations (15 minutes or so),
again followed by series of exercises including some where they had to
find out about non-introduced stuff. I was available for help (of course
this works with up to 25, but not necessarily with 90 students).
It worked quite well even though it's not exactly a fast way to introduce
a lot of commands...

Christian


On Mon, 19 Sep 2005, John Fox wrote:

> Dear Roland,
>
> I've taught the use of R to this kind of audience many times. Take a
> look at
> <http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Courses/UCLA/index.html> for
> materials used in such a workshop, and at
> <http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Teaching-with-R.pdf> for a
> paper on teaching social statistics with R.
>
> As others have suggested, using static slides is not a good idea, and
> having at least a live display for the presenter is essential. It also
> helps to have the students sitting at computers and able to try things
> out for themselves. If this is a workshop devoted to R, I'd strongly
> recommend this format.
>
> On the other hand, if you're teaching R in the context of a more
> general statistics course, you can cover the basics in a hands-on
> workshop and then use the LCD projector to introduce new commands,
> etc., during the course as they're needed. I find that once they've
> acquired the basics, students are able to work more independently.
>
> I hope this helps,
>  John
>
> On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 15:25:14 +0200
>  "Rau, Roland" <Rau at demogr.mpg.de> wrote:
> > Dear R-Users,
> >
> > given you have been teaching R to students (grad level, mainly social
> > science background, no previous programming experience, 80% know
> > SPSS),
> > what are your experiences concerning the style of teaching? Do you
> > prefer to stand in front of the class like in "normal" lectures and
> > you
> > show them slides? Or do you you explain some concept (for example
> > things
> > like mydata[order(var1, var2),]) and show it directly on the computer
> > via beamer/projector and also the students have to enter it on the
> > computers in front of them.
> >
> > Any experiences you can share are highly appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Roland
> >
> > +++++
> > This mail has been sent through the MPI for Demographic
> > Rese...{{dropped}}
> >
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>
> --------------------------------
> John Fox
> Department of Sociology
> McMaster University
> Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
> http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/
>
> ______________________________________________
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>

*** --- ***
Christian Hennig
University College London, Department of Statistical Science
Gower St., London WC1E 6BT, phone +44 207 679 1698
chrish at stats.ucl.ac.uk, www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucakche