[R] Using R in a university course: dealing with proposal comments

[Bill.Venables at csiro.au]

Comment 1 raises a real issue.  R is just a tool.  Too often people do
confuse the tool with the real skill that the people who use it should
have.  There are plenty of questions on R-help that demonstrate this
confusion.  It's well worth keeping in mind and acting upon if you can
see a problem emerging, but I would not take it quite at face value and
abandon R on those grounds.

Comment 2 is one of those comments that belongs to a very particular
period of time, one that passes as we look on.  It reminds me of the
time I tried to introduce some new software into my courses, (back in
the days when I was a teacher, long, long ago...).  The students took to
it like ducks to water, but my colleagues on the staff were very slow to
adapt, and some never did.  Also, R wins every time on price!


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
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mailto:Bill.Venables at csiro.au
http://www.cmis.csiro.au/bill.venables/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
On Behalf Of Arin Basu
Sent: Monday, 11 February 2008 1:41 PM
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: [R] Using R in a university course: dealing with proposal
comments

Hi All,

I am scheduled to teach a graduate course on research methods in
health sciences at a university. While drafting the course proposal, I
decided to include a brief introduction to R, primarily with an
objective to enable the students to do data analysis using R. It is
expected that enrolled students of this course have all at least a
formal first level introduction to quantitative methods in health
sciences and following completion of the course, they are all expected
to either evaluate, interpret, or conduct primary research studies in
health. The course would be delivered over 5 months, and R was
proposed to be taught as several laboratory based hands-on sessions
along with required readings within the coursework.

The course proposal went to a few colleagues in the university for
review. I received review feedbacks from them; two of them commented
about inclusion of R in the proposal.

In quoting parts these mails, I have masked the names/identities of
the referees, and have included just part of the relevant text with
their comments. Here are the comments:

Comment 1:

"In my quick glance, I did not see that statistics would be taught,
but I did see that R would be taught.  Of course, R is a statistics
programme. I worry that teaching R could overwhelm the class.  Or
teaching R would be worthless, because the students do not understand
statistics. " (Prof LR)

Comment 2:

Finally, on a minor point, why is "R" the statistical software being
used? SPSS is probably more widely available in the workplace -
certainly in areas of social policy etc. " (Prof NB)

I am interested to know if any of you have faced similar questions
from colleagues about inclusion of R in non-statistics based
university graduate courses. If you did and were required to address
these concerns, how you would respond?

TIA,
Arin Basu

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