Data Analysis Exercises: A Recipe for Student Success! (And ICPSR Can Help)
Incorporating activities based on real social science data is one way to engage students with content, with the added benefit of boosting students’ quantitative skills. If the idea of creating such exercises makes you blanch, this workshop is for you!
ICPSR WORKSHOP 11 February 2017
Data Analysis Exercises: A Recipe for Student Success! (And ICPSR Can Help)
Dr. Lynette Hoelter
Assistant Research Scientist and Director of Instructional Resources, ICPSR
University of Michigan
Need to spice up your course material? Incorporating activities based on real social science data is one way to engage students with content, with the added benefit of boosting students’ quantitative skills. If the idea of creating such exercises makes you blanch, this workshop is for you! Participants will learn about resources available through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), of which Texas A & M is a member, that can reduce the complexity of mixing data analysis with course content. All cooking metaphors aside, the workshop will provide a quick overview of quantitative reasoning skills that can be included in almost any course; an introduction to the tools and materials ICPSR offers and their utility in the classroom; and a sampler of the types of exercises that can be constructed. Participants will brainstorm in small groups about ways to add data analysis to existing course materials and, time permitting, begin to outline activities of their own. In the words of Emeril Lagasse, “BAM!,” a new secret ingredient to bring out the flavor in course content and enhance the skills students need to make sense of their quantitative worlds. (Well, maybe he wouldn’t say all of that, but you get the idea!)