[R] R] R GUI for undergraduate lab class?

Dr. Thomas W. MacFarland tommac at nova.edu
Mon Jul 14 15:42:10 CEST 2014


Hi Louise:

Pasted below is a section from a syllabus where I list a set of Tegrity-based URLs that demonstrate the R Commander Graphical User Interface, for R-based analyses and graphics.

The videos are all about 1 hour in length but there is a slider at the bottom so it is fairly easy to move past course specific sections or other portions that you may not need to review.

Comment:  Students in this class have no prior experience with R and minimal, if any, experience with syntax.  I try to start them out with R Commander since it is a fairly easy to use R GUI.  In time I move them over to R Studio and near the end of the term they use an ASCII editor to construct their own syntax, bypassing R Commander and R Studio.  Some students take to this easily and others prefer the GUI approach.

Comment:  The Tegrity videos then to show best using IE and Chrome.

Best wishes.

Tom MacFarland


\begin{longtable}{ l || p{0.10in} p{4.75in} }
\multicolumn{3}{ c }{
\textbf{Weekly Instruction}}           \\
              & &                      \\
\hline
              & &                      \\
{\bf Week 00} & & Module 00 -- Video Overview of Biostatistics (DEP 5001), \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bv3i} 1:14:26 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 01} & & Module 01 -- Overview of Biostatistics (DEP 5001), \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bv3z} 1:26:50 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
              & & Review the syllabus  \\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
              & & Use of the Blackboard Course Management System (CMS) \\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
              & & Alternates for communication and instruction (e.g., online equivalent of a fire drill) \\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 02} & & Module 02 -- Introduction:  Biostatistics and R, \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvmt} 0:57:37 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 03} & & Module 03 -- Data in the Large, \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvmq} 0:47:31 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 04} & & Module 04 -- Population, Normal Distribution, and Sampling, \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvmn} 0:52:14 Hrs and \url{https://tegr.it/y/1c1tj} 1:02:24 Hrs \\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 05} & & Module 05 -- R Graphical User Interface (R Commander, R-GUI) and R Command Line Interface (R Syntax, R-CLI), \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvmk} 0:46:54 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 06} & & Module 06 -- Data Exploration, Descriptive Statistics, and Measures of Central Tendency, \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvmh} 0:55:37 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 07} & & Module 07 -- Student's t-Test for Independent Samples, \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvme} 1:09:43 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 08} & & Module 08 -- Student's t-Test for Matched Pairs, \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvmb} 0:36:05 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 09} & & Module 09 -- Analyses and Graphics for a Large Dataset With No Missing Data, \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvm8} 0:19:36 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 10} & & Module 10 -- Analyses and Graphics for a Large Dataset With Missing Data, \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvm5} 0:45:51 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 11} & & Module 11 -- Oneway Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvm2} 1:00:34 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 12} & & Module 12 -- Twoway Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), \url{https://tegr.it/y/1btlg} 1:05:55 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 13} & & Module 13 -- Correlation and Linear Regression, \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvly} 0:56:30 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 14} & & Module 14 -- Future Actions and Next Steps, \url{https://tegr.it/y/1bvlv} 0:33:38 Hrs\\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 15} & & Review and Completion of All Assignments \\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
{\bf Week 16} & & Review and Completion of All Assignments \\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
              & & Conclusions          \\
              & &                      \\[-0.10in]
\hline
& & \\[-0.10in]
\end{longtable}

  



Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 13:47:08 -0700
From: Louise Stevenson <louise.stevenson at lifesci.ucsb.edu>
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: [R] R GUI for undergraduate lab class?
Message-ID: <41A24965-D53D-4BEF-916B-431E18086CD2 at lifesci.ucsb.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII

Hi,

I'm working on a new set of simple, ecological modeling exercises for our
campus' undergraduate Introductory Biology lab series. The students work
with simple population models by looking at graphs and seeing how changing
parameter values and initial population sizes changes how the populations
fluctuate through time. Does anyone know of an existing R GUI or any other
interface that would be good for an undergraduate setting? Basically I want
something that shows the students the model's output as graphs and lets them
change parameter values but the equations/coding itself is hidden such that
they can't change any of that. I want what Populus can do (a fantastic
program written for this exact purpose, info here:
http://www.cbs.umn.edu/research/resources/populus) but I want to be able to
upload data so the students can compare model outputs to real data and I
can't figure out how to get Populus to plot data. Any help would be very
much appreciated! Thank you!

Sincerely,
Louise Stevenson
Graduate Student, University of California, Santa Barbara
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology


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End of R-help Digest, Vol 137, Issue 14
***************************************

----------
Thomas W. MacFarland, Ed.D.
Senior Research Associate; Institutional Effectiveness and Associate Professor
Nova Southeastern University
Voice 954-262-5395 tommac at nova.edu




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