education task view

[G. Jay Kerns]

Dear R-Devel,

I have had it in my mind for some time now that a Task View related to
R and education might be a good thing.

There are currently 19 Task Views, covering a broad spectrum of
general topics for which R may be used.  The homepage lists 64 books
related to R, and several of them have accompanying packages on CRAN.
There is a wiki and a host of contributed documentation. We also have
a SIG-Teaching mailing list.

But the resources for professors seems scattered, and there doesn't
appear to be a fully developed consensus on exactly what types of
educational resources are out there.  Further, CRAN is so large that
it takes a careful and patient eye to get an idea of what is
available.

What might an Education Task View look like?  Right off the top of my
head, there seem to be at least the following four loose categories:


* packages associated with a specific book/text/monograph (many of these...)

* packages specifically designed with education in mind (e.g.
TeachingDemos, LearnBayes, epibasix, tutoR, schoolmath, ...)

* packages perhaps not specifically designed for educ, but
nevertheless are useful in the classroom (actuar, distr family,
financial, hints, urn, ...)

* GUIs: selected GUIs that provide interfaces to common course
topics/demos, or that professors might use to introduce students to R
(Rcmdr, pmg, RWinEdt, rattle, SciViews,...).


With only a _cursory_ glance on CRAN I found 69 packages which, from
their subject line, appeared to fall into one of the above.  You can
see what I am talking about at

http://www.cc.ysu.edu/~gjkerns/educationR.pdf

At 70+, an education task view would fall in the upper 20% with
respect to the number of packages, but it would not be the largest...
nobody can beat "Multivariate". :-)

Yes, there are probably some packages missing from the list.  Yes,
there are additional packages for which an argument could be made that
they are useful for teaching something.  Yes, the above categories are
broad and could be tweeked/reorganized or slimmed down.

My point is this: R is already being used in academia worldwide.
There does not exist (yet) an organized, semi-comprehensive CRAN
package representation of what R has to offer the classroom.  Such a
thing would - in my view - be a useful addition to the R community,
and might make many, many professors' lives easier.  A Task View may
be a step in the right direction.

I am confident that the R leadership knows individuals that are
perfectly suited to spearhead something like this if it were decided
to move forward.  By all means: go for it.

If there is trouble finding volunteers, then you're looking (reading?) at one.

Best,
Jay



--

***************************************************
G. Jay Kerns, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor / Statistics Coordinator
Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Youngstown State University
Youngstown, OH 44555-0002 USA
Office: 1035 Cushwa Hall
Phone: [phone] Office (voice mail)
-3302 Department
-3170 FAX
E-mail: gkerns@...
http://www.cc.ysu.edu/~gjkerns/

______________________________________________
R-devel@... mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

[Achim Zeileis]

Jay,

thanks for your suggestion and for the effort you already put into this.

> I have had it in my mind for some time now that a Task View related to
> R and education might be a good thing.

When I read your subject line, I thought: Yes, good idea. But reading
through your suggestions I realized that it might a bit difficult to
define what should go in there and what not.

> What might an Education Task View look like?  Right off the top of my
> head, there seem to be at least the following four loose categories:
>
> * packages associated with a specific book/text/monograph (many of these...)

I don't think that this should be among the inclusion criteria because not
all books are designed for teaching in a narrower sense (and all
publications are designed for education in a wider sense).

> * packages specifically designed with education in mind (e.g.
> TeachingDemos, LearnBayes, epibasix, tutoR, schoolmath, ...)

This might be feasible.

> * packages perhaps not specifically designed for educ, but
> nevertheless are useful in the classroom (actuar, distr family,
> financial, hints, urn, ...)

It is unclear to me what this could mean. Almost every package might be
"useful in the classroom" if you're teaching the topic that the package
addresses.

> * GUIs: selected GUIs that provide interfaces to common course
> topics/demos, or that professors might use to introduce students to R
> (Rcmdr, pmg, RWinEdt, rattle, SciViews,...).

This should also be feasible.

After reading through this, I think that the following might work:
Focus on directly teaching-related packages, especially for teaching basic
stats, e.g., packages with demos, data, functions, or user interfaces
(graphical or not) designed specifically for basic/introductory stats
and/or use of R. "Teaching" might also be somewhat more focused than
"Education".

> With only a _cursory_ glance on CRAN I found 69 packages which, from
> their subject line, appeared to fall into one of the above.  You can
> see what I am talking about at
>
> http://www.cc.ysu.edu/~gjkerns/educationR.pdf
>
> At 70+, an education task view would fall in the upper 20% with
> respect to the number of packages, but it would not be the largest...
> nobody can beat "Multivariate". :-)

Note that the goal is to have focused task views not to have large task
views. To be useful, it should be clear to authors and readers what the
task view is about.

> If there is trouble finding volunteers, then you're looking (reading?)
> at one.

Great, thanks! Please look at
   vignette("ctv-howto", package = "ctv")
(it's only two pages) and produce a Teaching.ctv. Then send it directly to
me and I'll have another look and give you some feedback. Then, we can
move it to CRAN and you can ask for further feedback on the mailing lists.
If anybody wants to post ideas now, that's of course fine as well.

Best,
Z

______________________________________________
R-devel@... mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

[G. Jay Kerns]

Dear Achim,

On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 6:59 AM, Achim Zeileis
<Achim.Zeileis@...> wrote:


>
> When I read your subject line, I thought: Yes, good idea. But reading
> through your suggestions I realized that it might a bit difficult to define
> what should go in there and what not.

Yes, agreed.

>
>> What might an Education Task View look like?  Right off the top of my
>> head, there seem to be at least the following four loose categories:
>>
>> * packages associated with a specific book/text/monograph (many of
>> these...)
>
> I don't think that this should be among the inclusion criteria because not
> all books are designed for teaching in a narrower sense (and all
> publications are designed for education in a wider sense).

Well said!  :-)

>
>> * packages specifically designed with education in mind (e.g.
>> TeachingDemos, LearnBayes, epibasix, tutoR, schoolmath, ...)
>
> This might be feasible.
>
>> * packages perhaps not specifically designed for educ, but
>> nevertheless are useful in the classroom (actuar, distr family,
>> financial, hints, urn, ...)
>
> It is unclear to me what this could mean. Almost every package might be
> "useful in the classroom" if you're teaching the topic that the package
> addresses.

You are right.

>
>> * GUIs: selected GUIs that provide interfaces to common course
>> topics/demos, or that professors might use to introduce students to R
>> (Rcmdr, pmg, RWinEdt, rattle, SciViews,...).
>
> This should also be feasible.
>
> After reading through this, I think that the following might work:
> Focus on directly teaching-related packages, especially for teaching basic
> stats, e.g., packages with demos, data, functions, or user interfaces
> (graphical or not) designed specifically for basic/introductory stats and/or
> use of R. "Teaching" might also be somewhat more focused than "Education".
>
>> With only a _cursory_ glance on CRAN I found 69 packages which, from
>> their subject line, appeared to fall into one of the above.  You can
>> see what I am talking about at
>>
>> http://www.cc.ysu.edu/~gjkerns/educationR.pdf
>>
>> At 70+, an education task view would fall in the upper 20% with
>> respect to the number of packages, but it would not be the largest...
>> nobody can beat "Multivariate". :-)
>
> Note that the goal is to have focused task views not to have large task
> views. To be useful, it should be clear to authors and readers what the task
> view is about.

:-)


>
>> If there is trouble finding volunteers, then you're looking (reading?) at
>> one.
>
> Great, thanks! Please look at
>  vignette("ctv-howto", package = "ctv")
> (it's only two pages) and produce a Teaching.ctv. Then send it directly to
> me and I'll have another look and give you some feedback. Then, we can move
> it to CRAN and you can ask for further feedback on the mailing lists.

10-4

> If anybody wants to post ideas now, that's of course fine as well.


Thanks for your response, Achim.  I like the idea of a more focused -
and well defined - "teaching" task view, and wholeheartedly agree that
it would be and should be clearer to authors and readers what the view
is about.

I'll put something together, and try to incorporate other comments
that might surface.

Regards,
Jay



***************************************************
G. Jay Kerns, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor / Statistics Coordinator
Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Youngstown State University
Youngstown, OH 44555-0002 USA
Office: 1035 Cushwa Hall
Phone: [phone] Office (voice mail)
-3302 Department
-3170 FAX
E-mail: gkerns@...
http://www.cc.ysu.edu/~gjkerns/

______________________________________________
R-devel@... mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

[Ted Byers]

Having just started using R, after almost 30 years writing my own code (in
fortran or C++) to do stats as needed, I don't really know what these "Task
Views" are, but from what I can infer from what the two of you have written,
it seems to me that the beginning of the process to produce an education
task view ought to be a task analysis (as conceived in instructional systems
design and evaluation -  a concept very similar to analysis done in support
of software engineering, e.g the UML use case scenario documents).  NB:
regarding concerns that the view may become too large, in software
engineering that is addressed by creating a core use case scenario and then
deriving extensions and sub-case scenarios (e.g. the task of opening a file
is so common, the steps for doing so are documented once, in its own
document, which is then referenced by all scenarios that require it).

As an educator, you know what needs to be taught, at what level, so starting
with that, assess each package for its utility for a given course.  That is
where the books would be useful: someone has already put together something
useful, a book plus a package, for some kind of course (possibly conceived
as individual instruction for professionals' continuing education, or as a
general introductory course - every book represents a course when reading is
conceived as a form of education :).

And as an educator, you know there is no end to the numbers of courses that
could be designed.  Every academic discipline is infinite in scope.  There
is an infinite number of questions that can be asked in any discipline.
Therefore, whatever you put together, either as an individual or as a team,
will represent your vision of statistics education, and hopefully your
vision will be shared by enough people that many will find what you produce
useful.

I would encourage you in your efforts.  Alas, all I can offer at this time
is moral support (too many things on my plate at present).

Cheers

Ted

        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

______________________________________________
R-devel@... mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel