For Instructors
Instructor Resources
This page is for instructors who are interested in teaching with, adapting, or learning more about Data in the Wild. It covers how to navigate the site as an instructor, how the course files are organized, how to set up Posit Cloud for your class, and how to get access to answer keys.
Student / Instructor view
The lesson pages on this site have two modes: Student View and Instructor View.
Student View is the default.
Instructor View reveals answers and lecture notes.
Look for the View: Student | Instructor toggle in the upper-right sidebar on any lesson page (and this page!).
Downloading from this site
Every lesson and assignment page has a Downloads block in the right sidebar.
Download source (.qmd): the raw Quarto file behind the page, useful if you want to open it directly in RStudio or Posit Cloud
Download data (.csv): any dataset the page uses, pulled from GitHub.
View expected output (PDF): appears only on assignments that have one (see below).
Save as PDF: prints whatever page you’re currently looking at (lesson or assignment, in Student or Instructor view).
Assignment File Types
| File name | Contains | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
mNaN.qmd |
Assignment | Public repo |
mNaN_key.qmd |
Assignment answer key | Private instructor repo only |
mNaN_output.pdf |
Expected outputs for the assignment, provided to students | Public repo, for assignments where one exists |
The expected-output PDFs are intentionally public: they let students check their own results without seeing the code or interpretation that produced them (more on why below).
The answer keys are the only place the actual code solution lives, which is why those stay in the private repo.
R, RStudio, and Posit Cloud
This course uses the R programming language and was designed to be taught using Posit Cloud.
A quick distinction for those new to the ecosystem:
- R is the programming language itself.
- RStudio is the coding environment used to write and run R code.
- Posit Cloud is a browser-based version of RStudio that lets students work online without installing anything on their own computers.
The materials can also be taught using a local RStudio installation or adapted to other environments, though some file path references in the lessons may need updating.
Setting Up Posit Cloud for Your Class
1. Create your instructor workspace
Sign in to Posit Cloud and create a new workspace. This will be the shared space your students join.
2. Set up the base project
Inside your workspace, create a new project and add the course modules by cloning them from the GitHub repo (see below for the clone command).
3. Invite students to the workspace
In your workspace settings, go to Members and share the join link with your students. Students will need to create a free Posit Cloud account if they don’t have one. Lesson 1.1 gives students time to do this!
4. Students copy the project
Once in the workspace, students can see your base project but cannot edit it directly. They click Save a Permanent Copy to create their own editable version in the workspace. All their work lives in their copy.
The free tier of Posit Cloud has limits on compute hours per month. For a full-semester course with active coding, consider whether your institution qualifies for an academic plan, or check current pricing at posit.cloud/plans.
Accessing the Course Materials
The Public Repository
The public GitHub repository contains everything on this site: all lesson .qmd files (both Student and Instructor view content), all assignment .qmd files, all datasets, and the expected-output PDFs described above. This is the repo to clone if you want to run or adapt the course yourself.
To clone it:
git clone https://github.com/BiodiversityDataScienceCorp/DataInTheWild_Website.gitFull setup and local-build instructions (required R packages, Quarto install, previewing the site) are in the repo’s README.
Materials here are openly available under a BSD 2-Clause License and you’re welcome to fork or adapt them for your own course.
The Private Instructor Repository
The private repository contains everything in the public repo, plus:
- Answer keys (
_key.qmd) for all assignments - The Final Project assignment
To request access, open an issue on the public repository letting us know you’d like to use the course, and we’ll add you as a collaborator on the private repo. We review requests manually and typically respond within a few business days.
You’ll need a free GitHub account to submit a request and to access the private repository once you’re added.
Once you have access, cloning it works the same way, just with the private repo’s URL (you’ll need to be signed in to GitHub with your collaborator account):
git clone https://github.com/BiodiversityDataScienceCorp/datainthewild-instructor.gitExpected Outputs
Some assignments include expected outputs: the tables, plots, or values a correct solution should produce. These are provided for students to reference while completing their assignments.
This was a deliberate design choice. Data science and coding problems often have more than one valid path to the correct answer. Showing students what a correct answer looks like, without showing the code that produced it, preserves that open-ended problem-solving while reducing unnecessary point loss from small formatting differences.
The actual graded work, the code that produces those outputs, lives in the answer keys in the private repository.
Adapting This Site
If you want to build your own version of this website, feel free to use this page’s public repository as a reference. Fork it as a starting point for your own course site.