Data analysis using R in the digital humanities: Instructor Notes

Things to remember

Load Zoomit beforehand.

Timing

Leave about 30 minutes at the start of each workshop and another 15 mins at the start of each session for technical difficulties like WiFi and installing things (even if you asked students to install in advance, longer if not).

Helpers

Remind helpers about voice volume when helping learners when teaching is ongoing.

Overall

Make sure to emphasize good practices: put code in scripts. Highlight the benefits of version control and mention the Git course. Encourage students to create script files for challenges.

Vector recycling and function stacks are probably best explained with diagrams on a whiteboard.

Be sure to actually go through examples of an R help page: help files can be intimidating at first, but knowing how to read them is tremendously useful.

Be sure to show the CRAN task views, look at one of the topics.

There’s a lot of content: move quickly through the earlier lessons. Their extensiveness is mostly for purposes of learning by osmosis: so that their memory will trigger later when they encounter a problem or some esoteric behaviour.

Don’t worry about being correct or knowing the material back-to-front. Use mistakes as teaching moments: the most vital skill you can impart is how to debug and recover from unexpected errors.