using R for online course/distance ed

Well, I can speak from the "receiving end."  I'm enrolled in an online distance masters degree in statistics at Texas A&M University.  I'm in my fourth course.  We are pretty much free to use any statistical software we want.  The first semester (distributions, goodness of fit, one- and two- sample tests of proportions, means, medians, etc)  the professor used mostly R, as did I.  Second semester (design of experiments, ANOVA ANCOVA, etc) was more SAS-centric, which I suppose is important for employability, but I like R much better. Thrid semester (regression) we used R, and now (overview of mathematical statistics, professor uses mainly R, as do most or all of the 60 distance students.

I have become quite fond of R.  I think it works well for distance education.  Demonstration/simulation capabilities are superb.  Programming syntax is pretty straightforward.  It's a real boon to be able to share code and know that it will run on whatever platform the other students happen to be working on. And of course everyone can get it for free.

Keep in mind we are statistics and engineering graduate students.  Perhaps a little more comfortable with programming and with the command-line interface than business undergrad students would be.  Of course, you plan to use Rcmdr as a GUI, so maybe that would "soften the blow."  I have no experience with Rcmdr.

Good luck.

--Chris Ryan

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using R for online course/distance ed

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