Open Block Plan

There are two “open blocks” in the course. We can come together to decide on what topics we’ll cover. Some topics we could cover are:

Flight Plan

Making these blocks successful will strongly depend on the engagement of students in the course. We’ll follow the following flight plan for these blocks

The week before a new block

On the Thursday before a new block, we’ll devote some time to deciding what topic we should pursue. We’ll then settle on a plan for resource scanning.

Resource Scanning

By “resource scanning”, I mean searching out and evaluating available resources for approaching the chosen topic. Collecting these resources will be a group activity. Students should come to class on the first Tuesday of a new block with examples ready to discuss.

R Packages

  • What R packages exist in the problem domain?

  • Do these R packages have vignettes? pkgdown sites?

  • Do they fit into the tidyverse approach?

  • Are they actively maintained? When was the last version released?

Open Source Texts

  • Are there any open source texts available? (e.g. bookdown or otherwise?)

  • What kind of texts are they? Tutorials? Course Notes? Open Source versions of published texts?

  • What is the author’s relationship to the packages in the problem domain? Author/maintainer?

Initial Implementation

Following the guidance of the resources identified in step 1, we’ll begin initial implementation and experimentation.

Fine Tuning

This step involves pressing further into the use of these tools, reapplying them to data sets from outside the found resources, and incorporating them into our workflows established earlier in the semester.

Report-backs

We’ll finally have a review and report-back session.