Notes on Becoming an RStudio Certified Trainer

I recently became an RStudio Certified Trainer, and thought that it might interest the broader R Community to learn about this new program.

For those who don’t know, RStudio has recently put together a process to independently verify that R trainers (a) are proficient with the Tidyverse and (b) know modern teaching pedagogy. Certified trainers get listed on RStudio’s website and also get referrals for training requests. Apparently there are a lot of people who want to learn the Tidyverse, and RStudio cannot keep up with the demand themselves!

The author with Garrett Grolemund at RStudio’s 2018 conference

I was actually one of the first people involved in this program, having taken Garrett Grolemund’s Tidyverse Train-the-Trainer workshop at RStudio’s 2018 Conference. Garrett, a Data Scientist and Master Instructor at RStudio, had recently created a popular workshop for introducing people to the Tidyverse.

The idea behind Tidyverse Train-the-Trainer was for people to learn two things. The first, of course, was to learn the ins and outs of Garrett’s workshop on the Tidyverse. The second, and perhaps more important, thing to learn was how Garrett had come to create this workshop. This involved learning a lot of important research that’s been done on adult education. The workshop also had lots of time for us to practice what we were learning.

At the end of the workshop we got the slides Garrett uses for his own workshop on the Tidyverse, and were told that we could use and modify them however we wanted. Perhaps it’s not surprising, but Garrett’s slides on ggplot2 and dplyr were fantastic, and I now use them when I teach!

I should also mention that the requirements for becoming Certified have recently increased. I believe that when I first took Garrett’s workshop, everyone who attended received a certificate. But recently, RStudio has started listing their “Certified Training Partners” on their website. In order to take be listed in this directory I had to take two additional exams. One exam was on the Tidyverse and one was on Teaching. The exams were given online, and were proctored by an RStudio employee.

Overall, I would recommend this program to anyone who wants to improve their ability to teach R. If you are a professional trainer, then the program can only help you in your career. But many people in the workshop were not professional trainers. They worked in academia and the corporate sector, and simply wanted help in bringing R to their organizations.

You can see the full list of RStudio Certified Trainers here. If you are interested in becoming certified yourself, you can learn more about the application process here.

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