Speaker
Description
Teaching university courses in geography, urban planning, and spatial data science demands tools that can convey place, and R is remarkably well-suited to the task. This talk presents a reproducible R-based teaching infrastructure built around several components: interactive spatially-enabled presentations, a course website ecosystem, and a reporting system leveraging the Canvas API. Lectures are built entirely in RMarkdown using xaringan, xaringanthemer, and xaringanExtra with interactive visualizations created with R packages such as leaflet, deckgl, and streetview. This enables the instructor to pan around interactive maps and streetscapes mid-lecture without leaving the presentation environment. Course materials live on a blogdown/Hugo site, giving students a persistent, version-controlled resource that is updated through the similar R-based workflow as the course slides. The author also connects to the Canvas API via reticulate to download student data, and then reads and summarizes the output using DT and ggplot2. Together, these tools demonstrate that R is not just a statistical environment but a viable end-to-end platform for course delivery and one that is especially well-suited to geography where interactivity and place-based context are essential. This workflow has been stress-tested across multiple courses and semesters with over 5,500 commits across five course repositories.
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| Keywords: Please list up to 5 keywords to help us find the right session for your contribution. | geospatial science, workflow, education, web mapping, web development |
|---|---|
| Virtual Option | This submission is for onsite presentation only |
| Video Recording | Video sharing is fine |
| The author(s) agree(s) to take responsibility and be accountable for the contents of the submission and is/are authorized to present it. | Confirm |
| Interested in serving as reviewer? | haffnerm@uwec.edu |