OTTR - Website and Online Course Tools

OTTR (Open-source Tools for Training Resources ) is a set of tools and templates to help you make websites, online courses, and dashboards more easily (and for free)!

Not sure? Help me choose →

Quarto vs. R Markdown

OTTR templates come in two flavors based on which document format you use to write content: R Markdown (.Rmd) and Quarto (.qmd).

Quarto is the next-generation successor to R Markdown, developed by Posit. It supports R, Python, Julia, and Observable JS, and offers a more consistent syntax and better cross-language support. It is the recommended choice for new projects.
R Markdown is a widely used format that combines plain text, Markdown formatting, and R code chunks into a single document. It has a large ecosystem and is a solid choice if you already have .Rmd files or are following older OTTR tutorials.

If you’re starting fresh and have no existing .Rmd files, go with a Quarto template. If you have existing .Rmd content or are working with a team already using R Markdown, the R Markdown templates are a fine choice.

R Markdown is no longer being actively updated

Posit has shifted its focus to Quarto as the next-generation publishing system. R Markdown remains functional but will not receive new features. For any new project, start with a Quarto template.

Resources for Quarto-fying your content:

quartify: an R package that automates conversion of R Markdown files to Quarto
Transitioning from R Markdown to Quarto: a practical guide from Openscapes

OTTR at a Glance by ITN

Benefits for all OTTR options:

No software installations needed
Automatically preview content on GitHub before you publish
Automatically check spelling (and customize your dictionary!)
Automatically and periodically check for broken links
Easily customize branding
Easily include code (and avoid version difference issues using Docker containers)

OTTR helps build github based websites with less hassle. Catch potential mistakes before they go live

Benefits for specific uses:

Websites can be created using quarto or bookdown
Courses can be easily formatted for learning platforms like coursera and Leanpub (only edit once and it gets propagated to all locations - making for easy updates!)
Metrics can be gathered from a variety of sources for dashboards

(*Note that you will need to establish a publishing contract with coursera if you want to publish there)

Check out this short video about OTTR:

How to use OTTR:

Edit and write websites and courses in R Markdown files or Quarto
Use GitHub to host your content, we will walk you through how!
Let the GitHub actions in our tools do all the checks and rendering so you don’t have too
Update your content as needed based on the errors OTTR finds and the preview
Publish your websites and courses!

How to Cite OTTR:

Please cite our OTTR manuscript here!📝👀

Click here for the BibTeX formatted citation

@article{ottr,
  author = {Candace Savonen, Carrie Wright, Ava M. Hoffman, John Muschelli, Katherine Cox, Frederick J. Tan and Jeffrey T. Leek},
  title = {Open-source Tools for Training Resources – OTTR},
  journal = {Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education},
  volume = {31},
  number = {1},
  pages = {57-65},
  year = {2023},
  publisher = {Taylor & Francis},
  doi = {10.1080/26939169.2022.2118646},
  URL = {https://doi.org/10.1080/26939169.2022.2118646},
  eprint = {https://doi.org/10.1080/26939169.2022.2118646}
}