vurnewyork.blogg.se - Rstudio cloud

At Amherst College, our server has 32GB of memory and 8 cores and routinely supports 30-40 simultaneous users.

The RStudio servers run under Linux, the typical environment that academic institutions use to support their back-office operations such as their course management system. This is what a number of institutions (examples include Duke University, Amherst College, Calvin College, Macalester College) have done. RStudio Server Pro: academics using R for teaching purposes can get a free license for RStudio Server Pro, Shiny Server Pro, and RS Connect Pro by providing a copy of their syllabus that specifies that RStudio will be used in the course (see RStudio Academic Pricing Policy. Being able to jump into R from day one with an ability to do interesting things makes a huge difference in motivating students. The results are transformative, particularly for the fraction of students who are easily intimidated by computing and/or who have obsolete equipment, outdated operating systems, or minimal free space. For students with concerns about technology or prior challenges with computing, getting up and running quickly is especially important. perhaps most importantly, the cognitive load related to technology is kept to a minimum.

Some institutions have purchased a set of notebooks that can be checked out from the library or IT department.

relatively cheap devices like Chromebooks (typical price around $150) work well with this setup.

the motley variability in hardware and operating systems that characterize most students’ laptops is rendered moot: all they need is a relatively modern browser.

they can jump in from day one to do interesting analyses (see Data Visualization on Day One: Bringing Big Ideas into Intro Stats Early and Often).

no installation of software is needed by students (they just connect).

Using an RStudio server is attractive because: We call this the “bring a browser” model. They can then start to work in R within minutes. Instead of installing R, RStudio, and packages, all that students need to do to get started on the first day is to connect to the server and log in. While this setup requires some up-front efforts by instructors and departments it pays off handsomely. Today’s blog entry talks about the third point: how the use of cloud based versions of RStudio facilitates startup for students and instructors. We’ll talk more about the innovative Data 8 project later this summer, but for now we note that they have used these same strategies (see ).