By Shu-Min Liao (Amherst College)
Information
Inspired by SCRATCH – a kid-friendly visual-based programming language developed by MIT – we are creating a brand-new block-based coding tool, which we call “RBlocks”, for teaching R. Designed with the least privileged students – namely those with no prior coding experience – in mind, RBlocks is created “from the margins” and aimed to minimize the learning barriers embedded in syntax-based coding for R novices and boost students’ coding self-efficacy. In this demonstration, we will introduce the first version of RBlocks, explain in details how it works, and describe how we used this new tool in an intro stats class in Fall 2022, which enrolled about 25 students most of whom didn't have any prior R experience. We will further compare those students’ R learning with others from another intro stats class which didn't use RBlocks. An in-class activity and a homework assignment using RBlocks will also be shared with the participants.