Teaching statistics interactively with webR

RSS International Conference 2023

Nicola Rennie

Teaching statistics with R

About me

Lecturer in Health Data Science at Lancaster Medical School.

Academic background in statistics, with experience in data science consultancy.

Teaching students with mathematical and non-mathematical backgrounds, at a variety of levels, in both academia and industry.

Blog about R and data science at nrennie.rbind.io/blog.

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Teaching statistics with R

Many introductory (and more advanced) statistics courses also include instruction on using R.
Many courses teach statistical concepts in lectures, then the practical aspects of using R in separate workshops with smaller groups.
Including programming examples in a lecture environment isn’t always easy.

Screenshots of RStudio

Screenshot of RStudio showing code and map

Screenshots of code

Code blocks with R Markdown (or Quarto!)

# read in data
census <- readxl::read_xlsx("Data/Census2021-health-la.xlsx", skip = 4)

# get local authority map shapefiles
la_map <- sf::st_read("Data/Local_Authority_Districts_December_2021/LAD_DEC_2021_GB_BGC.shp") 

# calculate percentage that have bad/very bad
bad_health <- census |> 
  mutate(Percentage = `Bad health \r\n(age-standardised \r\nproportions)` + 
           `Very bad health \r\n(age-standardised \r\nproportions)`) |> 
  select(`Area code`, Percentage) 

# highest / lowest percentage
slice_max(bad_health, Percentage, n = 1)
slice_min(bad_health, Percentage, n = 1)
round(mean(bad_health$Percentage), 1)

Live coding!

Pros

shows the process of writing code
teaches students how to debug code
demonstrates good programming practices

Cons

Switching between windows
More pressure as a demonstrator
Hard for students to run the code themselves

webR

What is webR?

webR is a version of R that runs in a web browser.

You don’t need to install R.
You don’t need to setup a server.
It just works (even on your phone).

What can you do with webR?

Lots of things!

Download R package datasets to .csv, .xlsx, … on-the-fly: tidyverse.r-universe.dev/ggplot2
Shiny apps without a server: github.com/georgestagg/shiny-standalone-webr-demo
Create interactive, engaging teaching materials (that work even in lecture environments).

Try it!

nrennie.rbind.io/rss-2023-teaching-webR

Adding webR to teaching materials

Quarto
- Combine code with text
- Multiple output formats
- Next generation R Markdown
HTML slides
Supports LaTeX

Quarto logo

Adding webR to teaching materials

Install the webR Quarto extension:

quarto add coatless/quarto-webr

Add the webR filter to slides:

format: revealjs
filters:
  - webr

Adding webR to teaching materials

Add a webR code block:

```{webr-r}
# set a random seed and generate data
set.seed(123)
x <- rnorm(100)

# calculate mean
mean(x)
```

Advantages of webR

Write and run code without switching between slides and RStudio.
Students can engage with code in lectures on their phones.
No set up required for students (and easy to fix mistakes!)
Use code blocks that are empty, have comments, or have pre-filled code.

Limitations of webR

Requires an internet connection.
Not all packages available. See rud.is/w/webr-pkgs/.

webr::install("dplyr")

Not a replacement for workshops. Teaching R/RStudio/package installation is still important.

Resources

Tidyverse blog from George Stagg: www.tidyverse.org/blog/2023/03/webr-0-1-0/
New York R Talk from Bob Rudis: rud.is/w/2023-nyr-webr
Source code for these slides: github.com/nrennie/rss-2023-teaching-webR

Questions?

chicas.lancaster-university.uk