I have been learning and using R in my research for a number of years now which has been a lot of fun! On the down side, most of the education undergraduates receive is in SPSS and graduate students will either continue that trend or move on to STATA or SAS. I consider myself proficient in the use of SAS and SPSS but I would much rather use R. For one, the ability to do all my analyses in one place is very appealing. I can pull in data, clean it, conduct item response theory analyses, exploratory or confirmatory factor analysis, multilevel modeling using IRT theta scores, etc. A process that might take two or three programs with any other software. Two, it allows easy work across my work machine (Windows) and my home machine (Linux). Three, it’s open and free so I don’t have to wait for my university to get around to updating the license so I can do my work.

In an effort to have a few more students able to use R I proposed a course in R programming. I was amazed at the overwhelmingly positive reactions I received from my colleagues. I created the course and was again amazed when it reached capacity within two days of listing. Although I am not done with this semester yet (barely half way, maalesef) I have learned a lot about what I know and what I can do with R (usually how much I don’t know). From the questions students ask to the clever ways they find to make the lab assignments easy I have learned more this semester than in the years of steady use.

Stay tuned I will be posting my notes so others can benefit!