Additional Material
These are instructor extensions to the eight-lesson course. Learner-facing practice and references are in Learner Additional Material. Choose one extension that addresses the cohort’s needs and connect it to a saved output.
A Small Bank of Optional Demonstrations
| Extension | Build on | Demonstration and check |
|---|---|---|
| Base R and tidyverse selection | Lessons 2 and 5 | Select the same country–year observations both ways; compare IDs and values rather than printed formatting |
| A helper function for repeated summaries | Lessons 3 and 5 | State the expected input, units and missing-value policy; test a small known table before reuse |
| Read back a derived CSV | Lesson 4 | Compare dimensions, identifiers and types; explain why factor metadata is not encoded in the CSV |
| A plot as a scientific argument | Lesson 6 | Compare an unlabelled pooled plot with a labelled, selected comparison and state what each can establish |
| Project handover | Any session | Ask a partner to find the input, script, output and checks, then rerun the saved script from a fresh session |
Reproducibility Discussion
Use a small completed script to ask: which settings, packages, input data and decisions would another researcher need? Record sessionInfo(), a data-source note and the analysis question. Explain why a software version record helps diagnosis but does not by itself recreate every dependency or validate the science.
Quarto notebooks and Shiny dashboards are now core lessons 7/8. Git and renv remain optional extensions when the learner needs an explicit team/environment workflow. Use the official RStudio Projects guide and the learner’s further reading as starting points.
Use the Existing Reference Bank
Lesson 5 retains selection/string variants and fourteen worked exercises; lesson 6 retains plotting variants. Use these after the core room tasks or assign a small set for consolidation. Discuss the unsupported-year example as a data-coverage check, not as a failed coding attempt.
Notebook and App Extensions
Use the shared project to test a new country/year selection, inspect a missing-value case in a clearly labelled altered copy and compare its report/app states. Keep a record of the known check, expected failure and data policy. Choose one extension after the core tasks rather than adding several controls or packages at once.