Teaching R online with RStudio Cloud

# Teaching R online with RStudio Cloud
## 🔗 <a href="https://rstd.io/rscloud-webinar">rstd.io/rscloud-webinar</a>
### <br> Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel <br> 🐦 <a href="https://twitter.com/minebocek">minebocek</a> <br> 👩‍💻 <a href="https://github.com/mine-cetinkaya-rundel">mine-cetinkaya-rundel</a> <br> ✉️ <a href="mailto:mine@rstudio.com" class="email">mine@rstudio.com</a>
### <br> 24 March 2020

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<a href="https://rstd.io/rscloud-webinar" target="_blank">rstd.io/rscloud-webinar</a>
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- Install R
- Install RStudio
- Install the following packages:
  - rmarkdown
  - tidyverse 
  - ...
- Load these packages
- Install git
]
--
.pull-right[
### much less friction

- Go to rstudio.cloud
- Log in

```r
>hello R!
```
]

---

.pull-left[
### you used to have this
<img src="img/jonathan-borba-PZBjJ12Xv2s-unsplash.jpg" width="70%" />
]
--
.pull-right[
### and now you have this
<img src="img/sincerely-media-o5Key-1HzaY-unsplash.jpg" width="80%" />
]

---

---

You have...
- sysadmin experience / IT support
- hardware / local VM / cloud computing credit
- RStudio experience

.midi[See [RStudio Academic Pricing](https://rstudio.com/pricing/academic-pricing/), freely licensed for teaching purposes.]
]
.pull-right[
**RStudio Cloud**

You have...
- RStudio experience
]
  
.footnote[
.small[
__*__ Çetinkaya-Rundel, Mine, and Rundel, Colin. "Infrastructure and tools for teaching computing throughout the statistical curriculum." The American Statistician (2018). Part of the Practical Data Science for Stats collection. [[Peer J]](https://peerj.com/preprints/3181/) [[TAS]](https://doi.org/10.1080/00031305.2017.1397549)
]
]

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## What is RStudio Cloud?

<br>

.pull-left-narrow[
<img src="img/cloud.png" width="264" />
]
.pull-right-wide[
.large[We created [**RStudio Cloud**](https://rstudio.cloud/) to make it easy for professionals, hobbyists, trainers, teachers, and students to do, share, teach, and learn data science using R.]
]

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---

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## Why RStudio Cloud?

- Does not require IT support
- Git works out of the box
- Knit to PDF and Word works out of the box

--
- Features designed for instructors:
  - Classes can be organized in workspaces
  - Members can be assigned different roles: instructor, TA, student
  - Projects can be public or private
  - Projects can be made into assignments 
  - Students can make copies of projects created by instructor
  - Instructor can peek into student projects
  - A base project template can ensure same packages in each new project created in the workspace

---

---

---

---

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## Workspaces

- When you create an account on RStudio Cloud you get a workspace of your own

- You can add a new workspace and control its permissions

- Projects in either workspace can be public or private

---

## Projects

.pull-left[
A new project in RStudio Cloud
<img src="img/new-project-cloud.png" width="90%" style="display: block; margin: auto;" />
]
.pull-right[
is a new project in RStudio IDE
<img src="img/new-project-local.png" width="90%" style="display: block; margin: auto;" />
]

.alert[
**PSA:** If you use RStudio, use projects! Trust me, you won’t regret it. Find out more on [R for Data Science](https://r4ds.had.co.nz/workflow-projects.html).
]

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## Projects from Git

.pull-left[
A new project from Git Repo in RStudio Cloud
<img src="img/new-project-git-cloud.png" width="90%" style="display: block; margin: auto;" />
]
.pull-right[
is the same as a new project from Git in RStudio IDE
<img src="img/new-project-git-local.png" width="90%" style="display: block; margin: auto;" />
]

Both options `clone` a Git repo

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# Sharing option

---

---

---

---

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## Pros / cons: Sharing a single project

<br>

- Students land directly in a project upon login
- Works well for workshops where all work will be completed in a single project
- Also great for sharing code in general, e.g. collaboration, reprexes, etc.
]
--
.pull-right[
### Not so good...

- Students need to remember to make a copy of the project (which means you need to remember to remind them!)
- You can't keep track which students started their assignment
- Students control permissions (they can share it with each other without your permission)
]

---

## Remote teaching: Sharing a single project

<br>

👎 You can't easily peek into student projects -- they would need to explicitly share the project with you

- They need to set access level to

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# Sharing option

---

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## Getting students into class workspace

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## Getting students into class workspace

#### Under the Members tab:

.pull-left-narrow[
<img src="img/workspace-access.png" width="100%" />
]
.pull-right-wide[
- Make workspace shared for a short period of time, share link with students, enroll them as contributors.
- After initial round of enrolment (e.g. drop/add) switch over to this access level
- Use invitations for visitors added mid-semester
]

---

## Permission levels

<br>

| role        | permission                                       | course role |
|-------------|--------------------------------------------------|-------------|
| admin       | manage users, view, edit and manage all projects | instructor  |
| moderator   | view, edit and manage all projects               | TA          |
| contributor | create, edit and manage their own projects       | student     |
| viewer      | view projects shared with everyone               | auditor     |

---

## Permissions

#### Under the Members tab:

.pull-left-narrow[
<img src="img/permissions.png" width="100%" />
]
.pull-right-wide[
- Recommend all permissions to be turned off
- Think carefully before checking these boxes
]

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## Capacity

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## Base projects

One of the most attractive features of RStudio Cloud!

- Packages you want *installed* on all student projects

--
- Text documents you want to appear on **all** student projects (e.g. code of conduct, turn-in instructions, etc.)

--
- Applies to all projects created **after** base project has been specified, doesn't apply retroactively

--
- Can be updated as many times as you like throughout the course (without having to convince your IT!!!)

---

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## Inviting a student to a workspace

---

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## Git integration

🛑 Only relevant if teaching with Git & GitHub!

😁 Base project template can be used, so new project from Git also has the right packages installed!

😞 Need to introduce yourself to Git **once for each project**. Start each assignment with one of the following:
.small[
- In the *Terminal*:
```
git config user.name "Mona Lisa"
git config user.email "mona.lise@example.com"
```
- In the R *Console*:

```r
library(usethis)
use_git_config(user.name = "Mona Lisa", user.email = "mona.lise@example.com")
```
]

---

## Pros / cons: Sharing a workspace

- Various permission levels
- Base projects with desired packages installed
- Assignments, which remove the need to remind students to make a copy of the project before starting work
- Ability to peek into students’ projects
]
--
.pull-right[
### Not so good...

- Students land in the workspace, may need to provide instructions for the next steps
- Git config for each project can get tedious and doesn't reflect realistic practice
]

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## Remote teaching: Sharing a workspace

👍 You **can** easily peek into student projects

---

## Common pitfalls

- Changes you make after student launches a project under either model (single project or workspace) won’t propagate to their project

--
- Packages in the base project will be **installed** in all projects in the workspace, but not **loaded**
  - If you need students to run code in the Console that requires a package, your instructions should remind them to load the package first
  - If using Rmd document, add a `load-package` chunk on top

---

## Feedback / questions / troubleshooting

- Check out [status.rstudio.com](https://status.rstudio.com/)

- Post on [RStudio Community](https://community.rstudio.com/c/rstudio-cloud)

- Email [support@rstudio.cloud](mailto:support@rstudio.cloud)

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# On the horizon...

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## Institution accounts

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## Dashboards

Student usage / engagement metrics

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## 📦 rscloud

- A new package for managing RStudio Cloud spaces with R: [github.com/rstudio/rscloud](https://github.com/rstudio/rscloud)
- Requires an API key, which any instructor can request (via email for now, but soon in the UI as well)

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# Parting remarks

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## Tips

- Each project is allocated 1GB of RAM
  - Test things out before assignments involving large datasets

- What your students see is not always what you see
  - Create a secondary account and add as a student

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## More tips

- Make brief screencasts for getting students oriented with the platform (especially if remote teaching), or use mine!

.center[
[Navigating RStudio Cloud on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNUVZZ6hfXX05Bs80Hg5MjbOPnEFmwiOM)
]

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## More tips

- Remind students how to hide the sidebar!

<img src="img/rstudio-cloud-hide-sidebar.png" width="70%" style="display: block; margin: auto;" />
  
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## More tips

- Read the [RStudio Cloud guide](https://rstudio.cloud/learn/guide)

<img src="img/rstudio-cloud-guide.png" width="70%" style="display: block; margin: auto;" />
  
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## Primers

.pull-left[
<img src="img/primers.png" width="100%" />
]
.pull-right[
[rstudio.cloud/learn/primers](https://rstudio.cloud/learn/primers)

- Free primers made with the **learnr** package
- Companion to R4DS by Grolemund and Wickham
]

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# 🔗 [rstd.io/rscloud-webinar](https://rstd.io/rscloud-webinar)

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