An R/Quarto tutorial for writing open educational materials
Dr James Bartlett
University of Glasgow
@bartlettje.bsky.social
ESPLAT 2025 Münster 🇩🇪
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
An R/Quarto tutorial for writing open educational materials Dr James Bartlett University of Glasgow @bartlettje.bsky.social ESPLAT 2025 Münster 🇩🇪