Among the biggest challenges is keeping students with varied computational abilities and backgrounds on the same page. For example, some students come in with extensive knowledge and practice with R, while others are seeing it for the first time. It is difficult to find assignments that keep both types of students motivated. Another challenge is maintaining a consistent level of difficulty and workload when cobbling together material from a variety of sources.The end of course evaluations indicated that students felt as though they were learning things that are useful. In turn, they have generated more interest among younger students in taking the course. Finally, several students have indicated that skills they learned in the course corresponded directly to questions that they were asked by employers during job interviews.