Structure of the Curriculum

[sclappe]

You have done a very good job in creating this curriculum, thank so much for all the work! I would maybe suggest to review a little bit the structure as follows to have a better flow of information going from beginner to more advanced:

1. Introduction to RStudio
2. R Fundamentals
3. Best Practices for Writing in R (better to put this at the beginning s that all the rest is done using the good practices ^^)
4. Data Types and Structure
5. Categorizing Data with Factors
6. Function in R - Basics (= what is a function in R and how to use it? Unless this is what will be done in R Fundamentals with using mean and median maybe?)
7. Exploring Data (Former Addressing data, should maybe include some content as well on Plotting data)
8. Dealing with Messy Data
9. Loops and Conditional statements (putting together the chapters Making Choices and Loops in R? )
10. Creating your own Functions in R (previously named Analysing Patient Data? You can also keep this name^^)
11. Handy Packages for Official Statistics in R (maybe a section to consider adding?)
12. Analysing Multiple datasets
13. Dynamic Reports with knitr
14. Command-Line Programmes
15. The Call Stack
16. Creating Packages in R

Come back to me if I don't make sense!

[alburycatalina]

Hi again @sclappe! Thanks for this suggestion on the outline structure. The outline has now been updated with a few of these suggestions in mind. The only changes that I've decided not to keep for now (but happy to discuss further on Monday) are the placement of Best Practices for Writing in R and Handy Packages for Official Statistics in R.

I believe that having best practices at the beginning isn't optimal for two reasons:

1. Placing more exciting information towards the beginning (in this case, getting right into writing code) motivates learners better (see this link from the carpentries instructor training)
2. If learners are brand new to programming, the significances of the best practices may feel out of context

As for including a section on packages that can be used in OS, it may make the lesson difficult to maintain if the packages stop being updated. It might be a better route to model to learners how to find packages that work for their use cases and apply them.

Again, thank you very much for your input. It's much appreciated!