[R-sig-teaching] I need your thoughts on teaching with R

[markus kossner]

Albyn Jones wrote:
> I should have noted this at the beginning of the thread rather than
> now, but forthe record, there is an R special-interest-group mailing
> list called R-sig-teaching where this might also be of interest.
>
> albyn
>
> On Fri, Mar 06, 2009 at 11:28:41AM -0600, Andrew Zieffler wrote:
>   
>> Hello Everyone,
>>
>> I hope this email finds you all well. I have been asked to write a paper 
>> that discusses some suggested practices based on learning theory and 
>> cognition research for using R in teaching statistics. In thinking about 
>> framing this paper I have been considering all of the instructional 
>> choices that have to be made. For example, should one use the base 
>> graphics, lattice, ggplots, etc? Should there be instructional sessions 
>> just devoted to R or should it be completely integrated and students 
>> introduced to functions and the like as they need it? What additional 
>> supplemental materials should be made available to students to help them 
>> learn R? And there are many more of these types of questions and 
>> decisions that need to be made.
>>
>> As I have looked at many of the texts that have incorporated R they all 
>> seem to have a similar approach of introducing simple operators such as 
>> addition, subtraction, etc Then moving to assignment; the idea of 
>> vectors; functions etc. It is unclear to me if there is a reason for 
>> this pattern or if it is based on tradition? Maybe this lends itself to 
>> developing better skills for students who will go on and do more 
>> programming in R, but --- at least in our courses --- there are also a 
>> host of students who will only ever use R as a data analysis tool.
>>
>> All of this is a very long-winded way of asking for your help. I would 
>> love to hear your thoughts on the following:
>>
>> 1) What are the instructional decisions that a person needs to make if 
>> they are going to be teaching statistics using R?
>> 2) What decisions have you yourself made and what were your reasons?
>> 3) How do you teach with R? Do you have sessions on R and other sessions 
>> where content is taught? Is the computing fully integrated with the 
>> content? Or some combination?
>> 4) If you have the heterogeneous group of students (some going on to 
>> program in R, others just trying to get through, etc.) how do we deal 
>> with this? Do we need to have different types of assignments and 
>> materials for the different students?
>>
>> Thank you in advance.
>> Andy
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Andrew Zieffler, Ph.D.
>> Educational Psychology
>> University of Minnesota
>> 167 Educational Sciences Building
>> 56 East River Road
>> Minneapolis, MN 55455
>> Email: zief0002 at umn.edu
>> http://www.tc.umn.edu/~zief0002
>>
>>
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>>
>>     
>
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>   
Dear Andrew,
as it seams to me that you will be interested in teaching data analysis 
and/or Resgression analysis let me point you at
Julian Faraway's excellent and free book  'Practical Regression and 
ANOVA using R' .
Faraway uses defined examples for using the various data analysis tools 
within R and comments on their use, rather than
talking too much about variables, functions...
That might be a good start for you. There's also a package 'faraway' 
that includes the examples... very great work!
You can find all that directly in the CRAN or just google 'faraway book'

Cheers Markus