Bill, very interesting comment.  However, do you believe that by posting
these tutorials on a wiki they could, even if initially faulty, be improved
by the community over time?

Ricardo



On 10/22/07, Bill.Venables@csiro.au <Bill.Venables@csiro.au> wrote:
>
> I think you need to see how things work before making any decision on
> this.  While the principle seems OK, in a optimistic sort of way, you
> may be a little disappointed by the outcome.  Some will likely be
> superb, useful, well written and accessible.  Others, I suspect, will
> fall short of this ideal, with some falling a fair way short.  That's
> the way students learn, after all.  They should use these exercises to
> straighten things out in their own minds, and some of them seem to have
> rather twisted ideas, at least initially, even at "graduate-level".
>
> Some people argue it's useful to see the learning process in action, and
> some books I could mention seem to be written this way - but they don't
> get very good reviews.  I just think there is a real danger here of
> giving misleading and inefficient teaching materials a spurious cloak of
> legitimacy, even if there are disclaimers all over it.  I see a need to
> be very cautious about this, in other words.
>
>
> Bill Venables
> CSIRO Laboratories
> PO Box 120, Cleveland, 4163
> AUSTRALIA
> Office Phone (email preferred): +61 7 3826 7251
> Fax (if absolutely necessary):  +61 7 3826 7304
> Mobile:                         +61 4 8819 4402
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> mailto:Bill.Venables@csiro.au
> http://www.cmis.csiro.au/bill.venables/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces@r-project.org]
> On Behalf Of Matthew Keller
> Sent: Monday, 22 October 2007 9:45 AM
> To: R list
> Subject: [R] Input appreciated: R teaching idea + a way to improve
> R-wiki
>
> Hi all,
>
> I will be teaching a graduate-level course on R at CU Boulder next
> semester. I have a teaching idea that might also help improve the R
> wiki page... I wanted to know what you all thought of it and wanted to
> solicit some advice about doing it.
>
> During the latter part of the course, students will choose a topic of
> interest (e.g., hierarchical linear modeling), and show how to achieve
> it in R. They would present their findings to the class, and would
> also be responsible for writing a concise but well-written "How To"
> manual on the topic. These would be ~ 5-10 pages and would include
> basic background of the statistical procedure and a commented example
> with code in R. The goal would be for these to read like Baron & Li's
> "Notes on the use of R for psychology experiments and questionnaires."
>
> Originally I was going to post these as PDFs on my own web-page and
> let them grow into a compendium of how-to manuals as I teach this
> course over the years. However, perhaps a better idea, and one that
> probably benefits more people, is to have my students post their short
> manuals (not as PDFs but rather typed in) on the R-wiki page.
>
> Does this seem like a good idea to folks?
>
> Another question has to do with how barren the current R wiki page
> is... is it still being actively developed or has the community given
> up on it?
>
> Finally, any thoughts on where on the R-wiki site we should post our
> "How To" manuals? The "tips and tricks" section seems to barely be
> more than snippets of conversations from this list-serve (often sans
> the context). My guess is that the "Guides" section is where these
> should go.
>
> Your input would be most appreciated. Best,
>
> Matt
>
>
>
> --
> Matthew C Keller
> Asst. Professor of Psychology
> University of Colorado at Boulder
> www.matthewckeller.com
>
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> ______________________________________________
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

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