RStudio Instructor Training and Certification

Our certified trainers would be happy to chat about personalized trainings or workshops that fit your needs.

Certified Trainers

Tidyverse

Shiny

About the Program

Our program is currently on hold, with no sessions planned for the near term. If you are interested in pursuing instructor training soon, we recommend you investigate the options offered by the Carpentries.

RStudio’s instructor training and certification program helps people apply modern evidence-based teaching practices to teach data science using R and RStudio’s products, and helps people who need such training find the trainers they need.

There are three steps to becoming certified:

  1. Candidates must take part in a training course on modern teaching methods.
  1. After completing that course, candidates must complete a 90-minute exam on the material that includes preparing and delivering a 15-minute demonstration lesson.

  2. Finally, in order to ensure that instructors are proficient with the technical content they will be teaching, they must complete a practical examination and deliver a demonstration for each subject they wish to be certified in.

Instructors must certify on a per-topic basis, just as pilots obtain ratings for different kinds of aircraft. We currently offer certification on the tidyverse and Shiny; candidates must already be familiar with one or both before taking part in training. Once certified, instructors are added to our web site and are eligible for free licenses to RStudio professional products for use in their training.

The training course costs $500, and each examination costs an additional $500; anyone who does not pass an exam can re-try once at a later date. Applicants from emerging economies may request a reduced fee of $100 for the course and for each exam, and a small number of waivers will be provided in exceptional cases for those in special circumstances.

For more information, please contact us.

Exams

Instructions for taking exams after completing the course.

Please email traininginstructor@rstudio.com to book a 90-minute appointment for each exam separately. You can do them back-to-back, but most people prefer to space them out.

Tidyverse Exam

  1. This exam covers material from R for Data Science. You may find the study guide useful. If you have any questions about scope, please get in touch.

  2. You must complete the exam within 90 minutes.

  3. You may use any books or digital resources you want during this examination, but you may not communicate with any person other than your examiner.

  4. You are required to use the RStudio IDE for the practical portions of this exam. You may use either the desktop edition or rstudio.cloud as you prefer.

Teaching Exam

  1. This exam covers material from the instructor training course; you may also find Teaching Tech Together useful, and if you have any questions about scope, please get in touch.

  2. You must complete within 90 minutes.

  3. You may use any digital resources you want during this examination, but may not communicate with any person other than your examiner, and may not share information with other people about the content of this examination.

Instructions for Sample Lesson

You must prepare a short sample lesson to deliver during the exam.

  1. Your topic must be related to data science, and should complement these ones. Please email your examiner to get approval for your topic before putting together your sample lesson.

  2. Send the following materials to your examiner at least two working days before your scheduled exam:

    • A learner persona characterizing the audience for the lesson.
    • A concept map showing the mental model you intend to convey.
    • At least one formative assessment (such as a multiple choice question or Parsons Problem).
    • Any notebooks or slides you would use to support delivery of the lesson.
  3. You will have 15 minutes during the examination to deliver the lesson and its formative assessments.

  4. Live coding is strongly encouraged: If you make any mistakes, try to incorporate them into your teaching as you would in front of a class.

  5. Your examiner will try one of your formative assessments during the lesson. Please allow 1-2 minutes for this in your planning.