Teach

This section walks you through how to use Posit Cloud to teach courses and workshops.

Pick Your Account and Plan

To get started, choose which plan makes sense for you and your students on Cloud. If your school has already signed up for an Organization account, you can skip this step.

You can upgrade your individual account to an Instructor plan, or you can create an Organization account for use by multiple instructors within your school or organization.

On the Instructor plan page you choose whether to upgrade your own account, or create an account for your organization.

If you choose an organization account, you then provide the organization name and the initial number of instructors you would like licenses for. You can also enable single sign on, so that instructors and students can log in to Cloud using their school credentials.

Student Costs

Since budgeting constraints vary widely, we offer the following three options for covering students’ costs.

Students Pay

You don’t have the budget to cover your students - but your students are able to pay a small monthly amount.

  • You sign up for the Instructor: Students Pay plan and pay $15 / month per instructor license.
  • To work on projects in your course spaces, a student must sign up for a paid subscription to Cloud - typically the Student plan for $5 / month is the right option for students.
  • If a student attempts to create or open content in a course space and does not have a paid subscription, they will be prompted to sign up for one.
  • Within your course spaces, you and your students have access to all advanced features associated with the Instructor plan, and there are no usage charges for work done there.

Fee per Student

You / your school are able to cover student costs, and would like to pay a fixed amount per instructor and student.

  • Choose the Instructor: Fee per Student plan. The charge per instructor is $15 / month, and per student is $5 / month.
  • Your students only need to sign up for the Cloud Free plan in order to work in your course spaces.
  • Within your course spaces, you and your students have access to all advanced features associated with the Instructor plan, and there are no usage charges for work done there.
  • You can either pay monthy via credit or debit card, or you can make a single payment in advance for an entire semester or year via a credit or debit card, PO, ACH/wire or check.
  • Note that to pay the entire bill in advance, your order must total at least $1000.

Metered Billing

You / your school are able to cover student costs, and you are able to pay a metered, variable amount per month based on actual usage.

  • Choose the Instructor: Metered Billing plan and pay $15 per instructor per month.
  • Your students only need to sign up for the Cloud Free plan in order to work in your course spaces.
  • Within your course spaces, you and your students have access to all advanced features associated with the Instructor plan.
  • Each month, you will be charged based on the usage by you and your students within your course spaces during the prior month. You will be charged 10¢ per compute hour over the 300 hours included for each instructor on your plan.

Create Your Course Space

Instructors typically create a shared space per class. The space enables you to share assignments with your students, provides the students with a place to do their coursework, and allows you to view their work. To create your course’s space, go to the navigation sidebar (click the menu icon at the upper left if needed) and choose New Space.

In the dialog box that appears, enter the name of your course, and if you have access to multiple accounts, select the account that will own the space.

Important

If your school has a Cloud Organization account, be sure to select your school’s account in the New Space dialog box. This will ensure that you and your students have access to advanced features when working in the course space.

Now that you’ve created your space, you have a number of configuration options available. For example, if you want all the projects that you (or your students) create in the space via the New Project button to begin with a common set of packages, you’ll want to create a Base Project for your space. Learn more about the Base Project in Space Settings.

Invite Your Co-instructors / Teaching Assistants

If you are teaching your course with other instructors or assistants, now is a good time to invite them to the space. To do so, go to the Members area of your space and choose the Add Member action.

In the dialog box that appears, enter the email address of your co-instructor and choose their role. Typically, you will set their role to Moderator, which will allow them access to all content created in the space. If you want them to also be able to add or remove students, or change the space’s settings, set their role to Admin. Following is a diagram that shows a typical mapping between instructional roles and Cloud space roles.

There are other methods for inviting users to your space, but the Add Member action is a good choice when inviting just a few people. For additional options, see the Space Members section.

Create Assignments

A good way to create assignments for your students is to make a project for each assignment, and populate it with the files and packages you would like each student to have when they begin the assignment. When you are ready to reveal an assignment to your students, open the project and do the following:

How To

  1. Click on the Project Settings button (the gear in the upper right)
  2. Select the Access panel
  3. Set the project access to Space Members so it can be accessed by everyone in the space
  4. Check “Make this project an assignment”

When the student opens an assignment project (either via the space’s content listing, or via a direct link to the project), Posit Cloud will automatically make a copy for them. To convey this special behavior, assignments are displayed a bit differently, both for you and for your students. For you, an assignment project looks like so:

And for your students, they’ll see either a Start button if they haven’t yet made their own copy, or a Continue button if they have. Either way, they’ll always open their own copy of the assignment.

You can see the students’ copies of the assignment by clicking on the “View n derived projects” link that will appear with your original project.

Note that changes you make to the original assignment will not be applied to any student copies already created. The changes will only apply to future copies of the assignment.

Invite Students

As you did to invite your co-instructors, go to the space’s Members area to invite your students to your course space. The easiest approach is to enable access via a sharing link.

How To

  1. Click on the Sharing link option in the Access section
  2. Set the Initial Role to Contributor
  3. Click on the Copy Sharing Link action

You can then distribute the sharing link to all your students via a course web page or email. Once all your students have joined the space, you can either reset the sharing link (which will disable access via the previous sharing link), or set Access to “Invitation Required” to ensure that nobody joins the class later without your permission. See the Space Members section for more details and alternate methods for adding students to your space.

Note that each student must have their own Posit Cloud account. When they attempt to access your course space for the first time, they will be prompted to log in, or to sign up for an account if they don’t already have one. If your organization is using SSO, account creation will happen automatically when they log in the first time.

At this point, you and your students should be all set. The following are some questions you may have during, or after, your course.

FAQs

How can I preview my course space from the perspective of a student?

We do not currently have a dedicated preview feature, but you have a couple of options. If you have a co-instructor or teaching assistant for your course, you can temporarily change their role to Contributor, and have them try out the space. Another option is to create a second Cloud account for yourself using another email you have access to, and invite that user to your space as a student (with the Contributor role).

How do I see my students’ work?

As an Admin (or Moderator) of your course space, you and your fellow instructors have access to all content in your space. You can open student projects and outputs from any content listing. To see all the projects and outputs of a given student, you can go to their profile page by clicking on their name from the Members page - or search for their name in any content listing.

Note that if you do open a student’s project while they also have it open, they will be temporarily disconnected from the project unless you have enabled Collaborative Editing for your account. See Collaborative Editing for more details.

You can also view how much time your students have spent using Cloud. Simply visit the Usage area of your space, where you can see aggregate usage data for the entire class, or for an individual student and their projects. Learn more.

Do my students need to pay?

No. You can sign up for a plan that will provide the Cloud resources necessary for your students via your course space. Students do need to sign up for their own personal Cloud account (if using SSO, this will happen automatically), but the Free plan is all they need. If they want to do additional work on Cloud outside the context of your course or workshop, they can of course upgrade their personal account to a paid plan. For more details about your options, see Pick Your Account and Plan.

Can I have my students pay?

Yes. We have a Students Pay option for instructors, where you pay for your access to Cloud, and the students pay for theirs to access your course space. See the Students Pay option in Pick Your Account and Plan for details.

What do I do with my course space when the course is over?

You have several options. The simplest is to do nothing - your students will still be able to access the space, and any compute hours they use there would continue to be your responsibility.

You can archive the space - this lets you retain access to the space in case you need it in the future, but removes it from active use and prevents you from being responsible for any more usage. See Archive Space for more details.

You can also ask the students to leave the space and take their work with them.

Another option is to remove the students from the space. See Remove Members for details.

A final option is to simply delete the space. See Delete Space for details.

What happens to my course space and students’ work if I cancel my Cloud Instructor plan?

The short answer is … nothing at all. Your course space and all your students’ work are left as is.

That said, you and your students may encounter usage limitations going forward. At the start of your next usage period, your account will switch to the Cloud Free plan and be subject to its limits. If your account is over the project limit at that point, you/your students won’t be able to create new projects in the space. Also, if you/your students use all the compute hours included in your Cloud Free plan, you/your students won’t be able to open projects in the course space for the remainder of the usage period.

Your students can move their projects to a space of their own (e.g. their personal workspace titled “Your Workspace”), subject to their own account limits, or export them to work on them locally. You can resubscribe again at any time, which would remove any usage limitations.

How do I reuse the materials I created for my course with a new cohort of students?

One approach is to remove the current cohort of students from the space, and reuse the same space with the next cohort. See Remove Members for details.

Another option is to create a new space from your current course space using the Copy Space action. See Copy Space for details.