cRunch is a service and an infrastructure for computationally-intense learning analytics. It supports researchers in munching away the data points, generated by learners online in the co-construction of knowledge – helping learners, faculty, and administration with living reports, created live from data.
cRunch currently has three components: the studio, the reports plus services, and the sharing facilities. The studio is a browser-based work space for exploratory data programming, providing the famous Rstudio server as a hosted service. The studio uses the simple to learn statistical programming language R – for data manipulation – and a wiki-like markup language called ‘markdown’ – for reports. The reports, however, are more than just text. We even call them ‘living documents’, as in addition to static text they also access live data executing live analytical scripts. cRunch services are kind of more complex reports, some of them intended for other machines rather than humans. Finally, the sharing facilities are the interface to the world. They help the cRunch community to remix, recycle, repurpose data and code.
cRunch is hosted by the Knowledge Media Institute of The Open University.