Alexander Savi

How to Return Qualtrics Quiz Grades to your MOOC

2017-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

You are teaching a MOOC or using a more traditional virtual learning environment (VLE)? You want to enhance your course with external exercises and quizzes? And you want the external tool to return the students’ grades to your MOOC/VLE? Here, I’ll show you how to do it.

1. The Qualtrics LTI bridge

Qualtrics survey software will enable you to create enhanced questionnaires and quizzes. In order to return the grade from a Qualtrics quiz to the MOOC or VLE of your choice, you’ll first need to make sure to setup the Qualtrics LTI bridge. The following resources will introduce you to the tool and help you set it up:

A demonstration of the bridge, without grade returns. Settings for a demonstration with grade returns are provided below.
Detailed instructions on setting up the bridge.
The paper about the bridge.

2. Grading

Now that you’ve got the bridge in place, it’s time to make sure grades can be sent from Qualtrics to your MOOC. You have two options. Either you assign a fixed grade, for instance to simply see whether a student finished a quiz or questionnaire, or you assign a variable grade, for instance to reflect the proportion correct answers.

Fixed grades

You might just want to know whether a student finished the quiz or questionnaire, without the need to assign a variable grade. You can do this by following the instructions on setting up the tool provider. By setting custom_grade=1, Qualtrics will return a 1 (or 100%) whenever a student finishes the questionnaire or quiz. You can set this value to any value in the range of 0.00 to 1.00 (which corresponds to 0% to 100% correct).

Variable grades

However, in a quiz setting, you’re most likely interested in the proportion correct. Such a variable grade is a little more tricky, but Qualtrics does provide the means to return such a grade:

Make sure you understand scoring in Qualtrics.
Set up scoring for your Qualtrics quiz.
Make sure you understand math operations and embedded data fields in Qualtrics (follow the link and check the links under More Information).

Now that you’ve set up scoring and know about math operations and embedded data, it’s time to use this knowledge to create variable grades:

Go to the Survey Flow of your quiz.
If you’ve set up the Qualtrics bridge correctly, you already have a Set Embedded Data element.
Create another Set Embedded Data element at the end of the Survey Flow.
In this element, add a new field and name it custom_grade.
You can now create your own formula to calculate the grade for a student. Importantly, make sure the grade cannot exceed the range of 0.00 to 1.00.

In the simplest case you can have 10 items, where each correct answer is scored with a 0.1. If you let custom_grade be the score, the grade will automatically reflect the proportion correct.

Now that you have a variable grade, it’s time to make sure you can return it to your MOOC or VLE:

Add another new field (this time, the name you give it is irrelevant).
Set a value for that field, select Insert Piped Text > Embedded Data Field, and insert custom_grade.
Copy the piped text that just appeared as the new value, most likely ${e://Field/custom_grade}.
You can remove the field with the irrelevant name if you wish, since it won’t be used anymore.

The piped text carries the variable grade and is used by the Qualtrics LTI tool to return it to the MOOC:

Go to the Survey Options of your quiz and find the Survey Termination Redirect URL.
If you’ve set up the Qualtrics bridge correctly, this redirect URL has the value of 1 attached to the custom_grade parameter (see instructions on setting up the tool provider).
Replace the 1 with the piped text, which will most likely result in [URL]&custom_grade=${e://Field/custom_grade}.

3. Returning grades

Of course, you’ll want your MOOC to collect this grade. You can do this by following the instructions on setting up the tool consumer. That is, simply make sure you enable grading callbacks when setting up the LTI item in your MOOC, and optionally, set the return URL.

4. A demonstration

Use the instructions from the demonstration post and the settings from the image below.

Happy grading!

One-Minute Qualtrics LTI Demonstration for MOOC Teachers

2017-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

An often-heard desire of both MOOC teachers and researchers is the ability to enhance their courses with sophisticated questionnaires. Here, I demonstrate a Qualtrics LTI bridge, that bridges your MOOC environment with the popular survey software Qualtrics, and ensures that the students’ learner IDs are recorded with their responses. Also, the bridge can help you adapt the learning material to particular groups of students, and enable randomized experiments to find out what works best for your students.

This demonstration will show you how to create the bridge in your learning environment, what it will be like from the viewpoint of the student, and how the additional functionality of Qualtrics (such as a rich variety of question or quiz types, personalized learning, and randomized assignment to different variants) can enhance your course. The demonstration will only take a minute to set up, and a Qualtrics account is not necessary (although it will be as soon as you start using the bridge in your own course).

In the following three simple steps I will walk you through the demonstration.

1. Open your learning environment

Open the learning environment that you use for your course (if you don’t have one, scroll to the bottom of this post). The Qualtrics LTI bridge works with all learning environments that support LTI. These include the two most popular MOOC providers, edX and Coursera, but also learning management systems like Moodle and Blackboard.

2. Create an LTI item

In your learning environment, create an ‘LTI item’ (terms may very across environments). Make sure to copy the launch URL, consumer key, and consumer secret from the image below. The image shows how the configuration is done in Coursera.

For demonstration purposes it is not necessary to share your learner ID. Of course, when using the LTI bridge in your own course you do want to share the learner ID, as it will enable you to identify your students’ responses in Qualtrics.

3. Run the demonstration

Now, publish the item and try it. If your setup is correct, you’ll be directed to a Qualtrics questionnaire that demonstrates some of its most important features. And once your finished with the questionnaire, you’ll be directed back to your learning environment.

That’s all there is to it!

Additional: grading

You want to return the student’s Qualtrics quiz grade to your MOOC? You can. Find out more in the next post.

Inspired?

Are you interested in using the bridge in your own course? It is freely available on GitHub and includes detailed instructions on setting it up. The accompanying paper that you can cite is available as a preprint, and provides an easy introduction to the bridge. If there’s anything else, contact me.

No MOOC?

If you do not have access to a learning environment, but still would like to view the demonstration, you can use this website. Find the ‘registration settings’ field, copy the information from the image above, hit ‘save data’ and then ‘launch TP in new window’. This should take you to the demonstration.

Blending Learning Deliberately: Learning About Networks from Vax!

2016-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

If a heat map of educators’ current favorite innovations would exist, the term blended learning would probably be red-hot. Although the idea is trivial, it most frequently refers to combining traditional classroom education with digital or online elements, it is nevertheless often poorly understood.

Deliberate blending

In my view, blending will only benefit learning if it has deliberate utility. That is, if the digital or online tool at hand is aligned with the goals, tasks, and examination of the course. Thus, rather than blending strictly for the sake of for instance moving with the times or cutting costs, the blended elements must deliberately target the insights or skills that the course ultimately demands.

The case of Vax!

It follows that some popular forms of blending, such as the use of lecture videos, do not necessarily promote learning. Deliberate blending on the other hand can be quite effective to attain a course’s goals, even without requiring much effort. To illustrate this, I invite teachers to incorporate a digital or online tool that can be aligned to their course, and ask them to briefly share their experiences. The first is my colleague Sacha Epskamp, who generously accepted to use the serious mini-game Vax! in his course on network analysis in Psychology:

I used the game Vax! in my course on network analysis for psychological researchers. The goal of the course is to conceptualize psychological systems such as mental disorders as a network of interacting psychological components: fatigue leads to being tired, which leads to concentrating poorly, which leads to worrying. A disorder then arrises as emergent behavior analogue to the emergence of an epidemic disease on a social network. In this particulair network, I wanted to describe how to quantify which nodes are most important in a network. The game Vax! let students playfully test for themselves if they can identify these nodes by preventing the outbreak of an epidemic. With this introduction the students immediatly grasped the idea of identifying the importance of central nodes in a network. The game was well received by students and allowed me to energetically start the lecture. Even asking students two years later about the lecture they still remember it well.

The game Vax!, pictured below, thus helped students to quickly grasp a central property of network models. A different mini-game, called Synonymy, gives students a similar opportunity by asking them to navigate from one word to another through intermediate synonyms. Both are examples of the type of blending that may indeed benefit learning. And as a bonus, the students have additionally learned to generalize an important property of networks to completely different domains.

Inspired?

Are you inspired to deliberately blend your own course? Or do you wish to share a great example of deliberate blending? Please let me know!

Evidence-Based Improvements to Coursera Courses Using a Qualtrics Integration

2016-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

Most platforms for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) do not allow their lecturers to use randomized controlled experiments to detect evidence-based improvements for their course. Regrettably, because the M in MOOC offers a powerful opportunity to do so. Therefore, in order to make these experiments possible I was elected for the UvA Grassroots program; a fund for ICT innovations in education. The post below introduces the project (first published in Dutch on the UvA Grassroots blog).

Optimizing learning in MOOCs

The University of Amsterdam partners with Coursera to offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). MOOCs are free online courses that can be followed by many students at once. Such courses have a few interesting promises. Firstly, the large number of students that follow those courses enable us to reliably investigate the factors that optimize learning. Moreover, the online learning environment allows for extensive customization of the learning experience. Unfortunately, delivering on these promises appears to be far from trivial, and thus in the current Grassroots project Annemarie Zand Scholten and I aim to take an important first step.

The tool

The first phase of that step has been completed. This phase consisted of formally connecting the MOOC provider Coursera with the Qualtrics survey software. We established the connection with the aid of the LTI protocol (i.e., Learning Tools Interoperability), which enables information to be sent from Coursera to Qualtrics. The possibility to return information from Qualtrics to Coursera might be added in the future. The tool that creates the connection, including a user manual, is freely available at GitHub.

The possibilities

The link between Coursera and Qualtrics is a first step towards both promises. Qualtrics offers rich opportunities to provide additional material, such as text, video, and questions, but above all the possibility to randomly assign students to different learning materials. The experimental situation thus created enables us to determine which learning material leads to the largest learning gain. Additionaly, because information can be sent from Coursera to Qualtrics, it is in principle possible to personalize the material on the basis of person-specific characteristics. Unfortunately, at the moment both Coursera and the LTI protocol solely offer to communicate the user ID to Qualtrics, so proper personalization is not (yet) possible. Should this change in the future, then the tool can be easily modified such that personalization of the learning material is still possible.

The future

In the second phase of the project the manual will be completed and disseminated such that Coursera lecturers worldwide can use the tool and improve their courses. Furthermore, we consider adapting the tool to enable it to send grades from Qualtrics to Coursera, and we are planning to use the tool within the courses of Annemarie Zand Scholten. Finally, we would like to thank Simon Wiles from Stanford University, who built the foundation of the tool and made it publicly available, and Rens Poesse from the University of Amsterdam, who adapted the tool for use with Coursera.

A/B Tests in Online Learning

2015-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

A/B tests are not only beneficial in website optimization, but too have great potential in leveraging online learning. In this very (very) brief post on A/B testing in online learning environments, I share some links to interesting online material that collectively may serve as a primer on the topic.

A/B tests

A/B tests are large-scale online randomized controlled experiments. Meaning, an online environment such as a webpage or app is randomly varied (hence A and B) across users, and after some time it is evaluated which variant is most effective. The randomization and large scale make sure alternative explanations are controlled for. Naturally, an A/B-test can be extended to any complexity one desires (e.g., an A/B/n or multivariate test).

Although superficially the idea is simple and straightforward, proper A/B testing is far from trivial. One great way to learn more about it is through the online course from Udacity. Also, Ronny Kohavi and his team are some of the few that publish many excellent papers on A/B testing.

Others that point out difficulties and propose solutions are for instance Slater Stich, Manojit Nandi, and Will Kurt.

Online learning

Large-scale online learning environments provide an excellent opportunity for experimentally optimizing learning gains. A few online educators are known to run A/B tests, such as DuoLingo and Khan Academy. However, results are shared only sporadically and informally (e.g., here, here, and here), and most of the environments are not available to external academic researchers.

A notable exception is the intelligent tutoring software ASSISTments. ASSISTments uses a crowdsource model that enables external researchers to run experiments on the platform. Moreover, massive open online courses (MOOCs) may as well lend itself to A/B tests (e.g., EdX content experiments), as long as the platform allows and preferably facilitates such tests and one can cooperate with a teacher on the platform. Finally, but unverified, DuoLingo says its crowdsourced course building platform provides A/B testing capabilities.

Interesting work on A/B testing in online learning is for instance done by Joseph Williams; make sure to watch his TEDx talk. I myself am currently setting up A/B tests in Math Garden and a Coursera specialization. If you’re interested in the topic or wish to cooperate (either in setting up experiments or analyzing its data), feel free to send me a message.

Photo: Kevin Dooley / Flickr

OpenBUGS on Mac OS X

2015-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

Before going through the effort of installing OpenBUGS on a Mac, ask yourself whether you wouldn’t rather want to use JAGS, Stan, or the awesome JASP. If you persist, this quick walk-through should help you out.

WineBottler

WineBottler will help you run Windows applications on your Mac. Download the version of WineBottler that is compatible with your operating system (e.g., OS X Yosemite) and install it. If you are unsure about which OS you are running, hit the Apple sign in the top-left corner and choose ‘About This Mac’.

OpenBUGS

You can now download the OpenBUGS ‘Microsoft Windows Download’. As soon as you try to open the executable (.exe), WineBottler will ask you what to do with it (this may take a while as Wine needs to be verified the first time). Choose ‘Convert to simple OS X Application bundle with WineBottler’ and hit ‘Go’.

You can leave the advanced settings that will pop-up to their defaults and hit ‘Install’. You will then be asked how and where to save the application. Saving it as ‘OpenBUGS’ in your Application folder is probably the most convenient.

After a while you will be directed to the OpenBUGS setup. Accept the license agreement, leave the subsequent options to their defaults, and hit ‘Install’ once more. As soon as the installation is finished you are asked to select the startfile, which should naturally be the OpenBUGS.exe.

You are now ready to use OpenBUGS on your Mac. You may either open it from within WineBottler (tab ‘On My Mac’) or directly from your Applications folder (as long as you don’t do both simultaneously). The first time you open OpenBUGS it needs to initialize, so you will have to be patient for a while.

Finally, be aware that you are now running OpenBUGS in a Windows-like environment, so you’ll for instance need ctrl-C/V rather than cmd-C/V to copy/paste.

BIEMS

You can now also easily run BIEMS on your Mac, for (in)equality constrained models. Obtain the version of BIEMS with a Windows user interface, open BIEMS.exe, and choose to run it directly (i.e., do not convert it to a simple OS X Application bundle).

Uninstall

Want to get rid of OpenBUGS? Make sure to remove it through WineBottler (WineBottler > On My Mac > Remove).

Troubleshooting

If OpenBUGS somehow fails to install or run, there are two options to consider. First check if you are running Xcode (hit CMD-spacebar and search for it) and either download it from Apple’s App Store or make sure it is up-to-date (hit the Apple sign in the top-left and choose ‘App Store…’ and ‘Updates’). Second, if you still do not succeed you may try to install MacPorts. Be warned that installing MacPorts will take a few hours to complete!

How Can We Tailor Massive Education to Each Individual Learner?

2015-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

In 2015 the Dutch government initiated a National Research Agenda, requesting both citizens and scientific, corporate, and societal organizations, to formulate their most pressing questions for the future. The 12000 submitted questions were condensed into the 140 overarching questions that ultimately make up the national research agenda. The post below contains my contribution (first published in Dutch on the website of the National Research Agenda).

Crowded education

An average classroom or corporate training consists of roughly 25 students/employees. A large lecture may be attended by up to 500 students. Naturally, all these learners desire education that fits them individually, which moreover is a requirement to stay ahead as a knowledge-driven economy. But how do we provide tailor-made education to 25 students in a classroom, or 500 students in a lecture hall?

A direction forward

Solving these issues requires an interdisciplinary approach, involving not only pedagogics, didactics, cognitive and developmental psychology, but also artificial intelligence and computer science. Moreover, it may require ‘academic’ schools (parallel to academic hospitals) that enable large-scale controlled experimentation.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Navigating Massive Open Online Courses

2015-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

In today’s issue of Science, Gunter Maris, Han van der Maas, and I, motivate the urgent need to adapt Massive Open Online Courses to the individual learner:

We agree wholeheartedly with J. Reich that research on the effectiveness of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) must focus on learning rather than mere clicking (“Rebooting MOOC research,” Education Forum, 2 January, p. 34). Our biggest challenge will be figuring out what is most appropriate for an individual student at a given moment.

Ideally, a MOOC would work like the GPS navigation device in your car. You tell it where you want to go, it figures out where you are, and it guides you along the most optimal route. Keeping with the analogy, current MOOCs are like having all GPS navigation devices instruct every car driver to turn right at 9:15 on Monday morning.

If we can’t adapt teaching and practice to the individual learner, MOOCs will never be more than a digital version of classroom teaching. To personalize the learning experience, we first need a detailed description of what a student already can and cannot do. Such information can be determined by traditional tests or by more powerful methods such as the practice-based trackers that already exist in other domains of online education (1). The A/B testing discussed in the Education Forum provides us with ideal methodology to start putting roads on the educational map. Once we gather information about various conditions, we can map each student’s optimal route.

Reprinted with permission. A link to the original Science publication can be found here.

Photo: Mark Fischer / Flickr

Tips on Using the Q&A Platform Piazza in the Classroom

2014-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

Managing out-of-class communication can be time-consuming. After having experimented with different approaches to optimizing communication amongst students and myself, I was elected for the UvA Grassroots program to explore the educational Q&A platform Piazza. The post below summarizes the lessons I learned from the project, and shares some valuable tips and tricks if you’d like to try it out yourself (first published in Dutch on the UvA Grassroots blog).

Out-of-class communication

Over the past two and a half years I tutored sophomore Psychology students in executing and reporting empirical research. Given the intensity of the course, many students wished to communicate with the instructor and with one another, even when not in class. This gave two problems. First, communication between students often went through a closed Facebook environment. Because of this, I had no insight into the problems of the students and I wasn’t able to correct incorrect advice from peers. Moreover, it appeared to promote plagiarism. Second, their communication with me often went through email. This time the students didn’t know what their fellow students asked me, and so I sometimes received the same question twice, while some questions could be perfectly answered by the students themselves. It would thus be great if all online communication would be shared with the whole class, such that the pressure on my mailbox would be lowered, and I would be better able to anticipate the problems of my students.

Exploring Piazza

Having sought a solution in the form of a mailing group (even more pressure on my mailbox), the use of a forum on either Turnitin or Blackboard (very unintuitive for most students), and Facebook (not a professional environment), I decided to try out Piazza. Piazza is a Q&A website, designed to provide a platform for teachers and students for online communication. Piazza is free, very accessible, includes a mobile app, and is already used by many universities. In this post I give some pros and cons, and share some tips for teachers who’d like to start using it. On the Piazza website you may also find more benefits, examples, and a demonstration.

Benefits

All questions, answers, and discussions are stored on a single spot outside your inbox.
Accessible to all students and teachers associated with the course.
No need to answer the same question twice.
Students help one another, the teacher only intervenes when necessary.
Private messaging with the teacher.
Reward outstanding student contributions.
A platform for discussion that is not restricted to in-class.
Free to use, including a free mobile app.
LaTeX Equation Editor to add mathematical formulas to a question.
Intuitive and accessible to use.
Create multiple subgroups within a class. The subgroups may only be accessible to some of the students, while the class is still accessible to all students and teachers.
Statistics (e.g., which student has contributed the most).

Disadvantages

Many students and teachers are unfamiliar with Piazza (unlike email, Blackboard, or Facebook).
Piazza therefore requires an initial investment of the teacher, both in instruction and in encouragement (see the tips below to ease this process).
It can come on top of other media (although it may also completely replace email, and may be used as a full-blown learning environment such as a Blackboard).
Only a fast and proper implementation of Piazza may eliminate the students’ use of closed environments like Facebook.

Tips

Give a plenary introduction to Piazza, show the students how it works, what you can do with it, and how you want them to use it.
Emphasize that in answering a question they always need to cooperate (and that they must therefore edit their peer’s answer).
Encourage students to use private messages only if truly necessary.
Don’t answer questions asked through email, but refer to Piazza (you can also choose to hide you email address from the students).
Use Piazza to make announcements or distribute material.
Encourage students to answer one another’s questions, and only intervene if the students can’t come to the correct answer themselves.
Reward students for their contribution (you may for instance use the buttons ‘good question’, ‘good note’, or ‘good answer’).
Create Folders for different types of questions.
Use the Pin feature to put important questions or comments on top of everyone’s list.
Use the Poll feature, for instance to find out if there’s any additional material the students would like to see covered in a next lesson.
Make sure you indicate in Piazza’s email settings which emails you want to receive.
If you’re using subgroups within the class, show the students how they can either ask a question that is only visible to their subgroup, or visible to all students in the class.

To conclude

Both my students and I were mostly enthusiastic about using Piazza and in future courses I will continue to use it. Since it is a new medium for many, it however requires a small investment. I would thus advise you to seek a medium that best suits your needs. You may for instance compare email, Blackboard, Facebook, Piazza, Edmodo (an alternative to Piazza), and any other option. If Piazza is your final choice, I hope the above tips will help you to keep the investment small and the experience great.

R with RStudio and Sublime Text on Mac OS X

2012-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

R is free and open-source software for statistical computing and graphics. Learning how to use R requires effort, but pays accordingly. This quick guide to R on Mac OS X collects some essential information on how to get started and build your first R extension.

1. How to install and use R

1.1 Install R

Download and install the latest version of R.

After opening R you may run into this error message. As a remedy go to your Mac’s Terminal and enter:

defaults write org.R-project.R force.LANG en_US.UTF-8

1.2 Use an editor

You can use R’s own console, but you won’t regret something more fancy.

1.2.1 RStudio

It is probably most convenient to use the free and open source RStudio IDE for R. Just download, install, and use it.

1.2.2 Sublime Text

If Sublime Text is your favorite editor, here’s how you can set it up. First install Sublime Text, if you haven’t done so already, and install Package Control, a package manager for Sublime Text.

Open Sublime and hit CMD-Shift-P, type install, and choose ‘Package Control: Install Package’. Search for ‘R-Box’ and install it. Repeat this step for ‘R-snippets’ and ‘SublimeREPL’. You can now start an R session in Sublime by going to Tools > SublimeREPL > R.

Finally you need to make sure that any R syntax you run from within Sublime is sent to the R session in Sublime: hit CMD-Shift-P again, type rbox, and choose ‘R-Box: Choose Program’. Select ‘SublimeREPL’. Now simply hit CMD-Enter on a line of R code to send it to the Sublime R session.

1.3 Learn to use

An Introduction to R – The official introductory manual and a great reference.
R for Beginners – A manual for beginners of R.
R for Absolute Beginners – A manual for absolute beginners of R.
Computational Statistics – Excellent lecture notes from a course on R.
Introductory Statistics with R – A free online book by Peter Dalgaard.

1.4 Get help

R manuals – All official manuals for R.
RSeek – A search engine for R.
Cheat sheet – Two reference cards for R.
Quick-R – Great online reference for R.
StackOverflow – Excellent forum for posting questions about R.

2. How to build an R package

2.1 Set up

Source the functions that should be included in your package. It is good practice to write each function in a separate file and give the file and function the same appropriate name. To source the functions, either open the files in RStudio and source them using the source-button, or use the source() function.

Now build the skeleton of your package:

package.skeleton(list = c("functionNameA", "functionNameB", "functionNameC"), name = "packageName")

Find your package skeleton in a directory named after your package in your current working directory. Use the getwd() function if you don not remember what your current working directory is.

2.2 Write supporting files

The skeleton includes a DESCRIPTION and NAMESPACE file, and a man (hosting the manuals) and R (hosting the functions) directory. Optionally, you may add a data directory, which you may use to include an .Rdata-file for instance.

First open and update the DESCRIPTION file. This file should be self-explanatory, but instructions and an example can be found here.

Second open and update the NAMESPACE file. Read the manual for instructions, and have a look at this example.

Finally make sure you write the manual files. Consider using any of these keywords in your manual.

As these steps might not be trivial the first time, consider having a look at someone else’s package. Find a package, download and open the packageName_versionNumber.tar.gz file, and open the package files to see how it should be done.

2.3 Build package

You may now build the package. Open the Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and run (fill in the right names and omit the stars):

cd /Users/*...*/*parent_directory_of_package_directory*/  
R CMD build *packageName*  
R CMD check *packageName*

Be sure to use the correct directory and name of your package. If necessary solve the encountered problems, which are described in the 00install.out file in the packageName.Rcheck directory. Build and check your package until it is ready for use. Your package is called packageName_versionNumber.tar.gz.

If you wish to submit your package to CRAN, please refer to the manual.

2.4 Get help

Simple yet more extensive guidelines can be found here and here. For specific help read through the complete manual.

3. How to use R on the go

RStudio Portable – Run RStudio from USB.
RStudio Server – Run RStudio from a server.

LaTeX on Mac OS X

2012-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

LaTeX is a very powerful language for writing documents. Unfortunately, making sure you can work with LaTeX and exploit its full potential can be quite cumbersome. To my best knowledge, a guide for quickly preparing your system for the use of LaTeX and some of its important extensions is currently not available. This quick guide to LaTeX on a Mac is targeted at first time users and is meant as an aid to minimize the amount of effort it takes to prepare your system, and to maximize the time you can use to (learn to) write beautiful documents and conduct reproducible research.

Update: ShareLaTeX has evolved into a very accessible yet powerful online editor. It’s free (up to a certain extent), and enables you to work from anywhere, explore your document history, collaborate with ease, sync to Dropbox/GitHub, and use tons of templates. It even allows you to knit some R into your documents. Worth a try!

Update 2: Overleaf offers a service similar to that of ShareLaTeX.

1. How to install and use LaTeX

1.1 Set up

Download and install the latest MacTeX distribution. This distribution contains everything you need to start typesetting beautiful documents. To check whether LaTeX was installed correctly, open the Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and run:

pdflatex

This should return the message This is pdfTeX.

We might also update the packages used by LaTeX and update the TeX Live package manager itself:

sudo tlmgr update –self
sudo tlmgr update –all

The sudo command is used to run the update as an administrator, which is necessary because MacTeX installs as root, and the tlmgr command calls the package manager. You might be asked to provide the administrator password of your Mac. Notice that nothing is shown while typing it, but it is registered nonetheless.

Now download and install R and RStudio. RStudio is a graphical user interface for R, but also supports LaTeX and Sweave. Although it is not necessary to use RStudio (MacTeX includes its own editor, TeXShop), we will do so as it comes with many great features, such as syntax highlighting (watch the screencast on RStudio’s website). Please note however that TeXShop is more stable and is sometimes preferred to compile a document.

1.2 Learn to use

Read the excellent but not so short introduction to LaTeX, and print the cheat sheet. Open RStudio or TeXShop and start fooling around with everything you’ve just learned. In RStudio choose File > New > TeX Document, and once you have completed a document compile it by hitting the Compile PDF button (Shift-Cmd-I). In TeXShop hit Typeset to compile a document (Cmd-T).

A lot of reference material is available, such as the great Wikibook or a more specialized tutorial on how to construct graphical models in LaTeX.

1.3 Templates and examples

Explore LaTeX’s possibilities by trying some examples. Just open the .tex files with RStudio or TeXShop, edit them if you want, and compile them to watch the result. Remember to compile it a few times if your document is not rendered correctly the first time.

2. How to write an APA style (6) paper in LaTeX

2.1 Set up

To install the apa6 package open the Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and run:

sudo tlmgr install apa6

If you run into an error you may need to update the package manager (see 1.1). Make sure the package is successfully installed:

tlmgr show apa6

Installing other packages works the same way, just replace apa6 by the name of the other package.

In order to manage your bibliography and refer to articles properly, you need to prepare your system for biblatex and biber. These are relatively new packages, but are supposed to become the new standard for reference management in LaTeX.

Follow the instructions in the most preferred answer to the question in this link (the one that asks you to make a file called TeXShopBib.sh). Moving the file to the proposed directory can be done by opening the Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and running:

open /usr/texbin

Copy the TeXShopBib.sh script to this folder. Go back to the Terminal again and run:

sudo chmod +x /usr/texbin/TeXShopBib.sh

Now complete the instructions in the above link.

Download and install JabRef. With JabRef you will be able to manage all your references. To activate BibLaTeX mode go to Options > Preferences > Advanced and tick BibLaTeX mode.

Make sure you can easily import references through Google Scholar. Open Google Scholar, go to Settings in the top right of the website, set the Bibliography Manager to Show links to import citations into BibTeX, and hit Save. Now search for an article, hit Import into BibTeX, save the text, and follow the instructions in this video. Once you have stored some articles in JabRef, save the .bib file in the folder where you keep the .tex file you want to use the references in.

Finally make sure to add the line below in the first twenty lines of your TeX document:

% !BIB TS-program = biber

Do not forget to select BibTeX and hit Typeset (Shift+CMD+B), before selecting LaTeX and hitting Typeset (Shift+CMD+L), to create your APA style 6 document in TeXShop.

You can also use RStudio, but remember to run biber in TeXShop (Shift+CMD+B) every time you add new references to your document. Fix warnings if there are any, before compiling your document in RStudio.

2.2 Learn to use

Read the documentation for JabRef and the apa6 package manual. Keep the BibLaTeX manual for reference.

2.3 Templates and examples

Get instant satisfaction by compiling an excellent short example or long example. Do not forget to download the bibliography and figures to the same folder.

3. How to handle R output in LaTeX

NB: you might want to check out knitr before starting to use Sweave.

3.1 Set up

Download the Sweave.sh shell script. Now open the Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and run:

open /usr/local/bin

Copy the Sweave.sh script to this folder. Go back to the Terminal again and run:

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/Sweave.sh

When using TeXShop as your editor, you need to specify the location of the Sweave.sh script. Go to TeXShop > Preferences…, click the Misc tab, and type in the Personal Script > LaTeX Program field:

/usr/local/bin/Sweave.sh -ld

3.2 Learn to use

Make sure to read the excellent Learning to Sweave in APA Style. The official manual could come in handy as well, and you might want to read The Joy of Sweave.

3.3 Templates and examples

Open an example in RStudio, edit it if you want, and compile it. Make sure to install the R package xtable, which is required for running the particular R code in this example.

Another example (remove the line library(ctest) before compiling). Yet another example.

4. How to make a presentation in LaTeX

4.1 Set up

Make sure the packages beamer, pgf, and xcolor are installed:

tlmgr show beamer
tlmgr show pgf
tlmgr show xcolor

If not, install them:

sudo tlmgr install beamer
sudo tlmgr install pgf
sudo tlmgr install xcolor

4.2 Learn to use

The beamer user guide is a must read and excellent reference. Soon more.

Scientific posters can be made using the beamerposter package.

4.3 Templates and examples

Examples abound: conference talk, here, here, and here. Soon more.

And templates for your own use: conference talk, short talk, generic talk.

5. How to collaborate on LaTeX documents

Use ShareLaTeX, Overleaf, or Weavr to share your documents, collaborate on them, or just have easy access anywhere. You can even TeXify your email by using GmailTeX.

Alexander Savi

How to Return Qualtrics Quiz Grades to your MOOC

1. The Qualtrics LTI bridge

2. Grading

Fixed grades

Variable grades

3. Returning grades

4. A demonstration

One-Minute Qualtrics LTI Demonstration for MOOC Teachers

1. Open your learning environment

2. Create an LTI item

3. Run the demonstration

Additional: grading

Inspired?

No MOOC?

Blending Learning Deliberately: Learning About Networks from Vax!

Deliberate blending

The case of Vax!

Inspired?

Evidence-Based Improvements to Coursera Courses Using a Qualtrics Integration

Optimizing learning in MOOCs

The tool

The possibilities

The future

A/B Tests in Online Learning

A/B tests

Online learning

OpenBUGS on Mac OS X

WineBottler

OpenBUGS

BIEMS

Uninstall

Troubleshooting

How Can We Tailor Massive Education to Each Individual Learner?

Crowded education

More questions than answers

A direction forward

Navigating Massive Open Online Courses

Tips on Using the Q&A Platform Piazza in the Classroom

Out-of-class communication

Exploring Piazza

Benefits

Disadvantages

Tips

To conclude

R with RStudio and Sublime Text on Mac OS X

1. How to install and use R

1.1 Install R

1.2 Use an editor

1.2.1 RStudio

1.2.2 Sublime Text

1.3 Learn to use

1.4 Get help

2. How to build an R package

2.1 Set up

2.2 Write supporting files

2.3 Build package

2.4 Get help

3. How to use R on the go

LaTeX on Mac OS X

1. How to install and use LaTeX

1.1 Set up

1.2 Learn to use

1.3 Templates and examples

2. How to write an APA style (6) paper in LaTeX

2.1 Set up

2.2 Learn to use

2.3 Templates and examples

3. How to handle R output in LaTeX

3.1 Set up

3.2 Learn to use

3.3 Templates and examples

4. How to make a presentation in LaTeX

4.1 Set up

4.2 Learn to use

4.3 Templates and examples

5. How to collaborate on LaTeX documents