An R/Quarto tutorial for writing open educational materials
Dr James Bartlett
University of Glasgow
@bartlettje.bsky.social
ESPLAT 2025 Münster 🇩🇪
Preparation steps
R/RStudio downloaded to your laptop ✔️
At least RStudio v2022.07 or later
A github account if you do not have one already ✔️
Consider applying for an education account!
Download github desktop to access git and a graphical user interface (GUI) ✔️
Why open educational materials?
Although credit/incentives are not always optimal, open materials/tutorials benefit science (
PsyTeachR Team, 2022
).
Academics need to work on self-branding to build your profile and reputation (
Dijkstra, 2022
).
“For the love of God, share what you do” (
Nordmann, 2025
).
Key terminology
Quarto
Quarto
= scientific and technical publishing system to combine text and code.
Render
= generate a new file that combines text, code, and output.
github
github
= a developer platform for managing and sharing code.
git
= a version control system to track code/files.
Repository
= a folder containing a saved version of your code.
Pull
= retrieve the current version of code in a repository.
Commit
= save any current changes to code.
Push
= upload your changes to your repository.
Quarto workflow
Dissemination workflow