Month: March 2020

Intro to Statistics Assignment

Jessica Elena Brodsky and Elizabeth Sergile

Instructions

For this semester-long project, you will be asked to write a proposal for research project in which you will analyze data from the U.S. Census to answer a question of your choosing.  You will work together with a small group and coordinate via Microsoft Teams to complete this project. Beginning of the Semester: Preliminary Analyses

  1. Start by learning about the United States Census: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census
  2. To create your group for this project, you will rank your top five regions of the United States. I will use this information to group students based on shared regions of interest. 
  3. Once groups are formed, you will be provided with the Census data file for 2010.
  4. You will be asked to conduct preliminary analyses on your region’s Census data by providing descriptive statistics about your region (descriptive = describing). This will also help you get to know what data is collected by the Census.
Map to illustrate U.S. Census divisions, map contents detailed below.
East North Central Illinois (IL)
Indiana (IN)
Michigan (MI)
Ohio (OH)
Wisconsin (WI)		East South Central Alabama (AL)
Kentucky (KY)
Mississippi (MS)
Tennessee (TN)		Middle Atlantic New Jersey (NJ)
New York (NY)
Pennsylvania (PA)		Mountain Arizona (AZ)
Colorado (CO)
Idaho (ID)
Montana (MT)
New Mexico (NM)
Nevada (NV)
Utah (UT)
Wyoming (WY)		New England Connecticut (CT)
Maine (ME)
Massachusetts (MA)
New Hampshire (NH)
Rhode Island (RI)
Vermont (VT)
Pacific California (CA)
Oregon (OR)
Washington (WA)		South Atlantic Delaware (DE)
Florida (FL)
Georgia (GA)
Maryland (MD)
North Carolina (NC)
South Carolina (SC)
Virginia (VA)
West Virginia (WV)		West North Central Iowa (IA)
Kansas (KS)
Minnesota (MN)
Missouri (MO)
Nebraska (NE)
North Dakota (ND)
South Dakota (SD)		West South Central Arkansas (AR)
Louisiana (LA)
Oklahoma (OK)
Texas (TX)		 Click here to make your selections.

Middle of the Semester: Identifying Your Research Question

  1. Now that you are familiar with types of Census data collected and your region, you will identify a research question that you can answer using Census data for your region. To help you identify your research question, first think about the target audience for your proposal – this it the group of people that would be interested in some of the data collected by the Census. Then , think about what research questions that group of people would be interested in answering. Make sure that you can justify why this research question is of interest to your target audience.
  2. To demonstrate that it is feasible to answer your research question using the Census data, identify the specific variables that you will need to extract from the Census data for your analyses.
  3. With your group, complete Module A5 of the Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap to help your group determine how you will organize and document your project. This is a great opportunity to get familiar with Microsoft Teams and determine which features of this tool you will use for managing the different parts of your project. 
  4. In class, each group will be asked to briefly present your research question, variables of interest, and project documentation plan to the class. You will have the opportunity to revise these three components based on feedback from me and your peers before submitting this part of the assignment.

End of the Semester: Addressing Your Research Question

  1. Now it’s time to write your proposal. In this proposal, you should:
    1. Provide descriptives of your region using Census data from your region
    2. Describe your target audience
    3. Provide your research question
    4. Explain why this question would be of interest to your target audience
    5. Identify variables of interest
    6. Identify descriptive and inferential tests that you will conduct and explain why they are appropriate for your data and research question
    7. Describe how you will visualize your results and explain why the visualization is appropriate for your data
  2. Once everyone’s proposal are submitted, you will be asked to peer-review each others proposal using the online rubric available here (see below for Evaluation Rubric).

Evaluation Rubric

 Using this rubric document, evaluate each division’s proposal. Use a new copy for each division you will evaluate. Please use this link to deposit your completed evaluations.  

Response: Course Context

A brief statement of the context of the course (discipline, level, institution type, instructional mode, is it real or imagined) This assignment is for an Introductory Statistics course that qualifies as Quantitative Reasoning course, as defined by CUNY Pathways. The course is taught face-to-face. This course is imagined, though Liz has taught Intro to Business Statistics and Statistics for Social Sciences; and Jessica has taught Experimental Psychology at Hunter, which incorporates review of basic statistical concepts and tests. Course Goals:

  • Understand foundational statistical concepts
  • Conduct and interpret appropriate statistical tests
  • Apply statistics to real-world problems
  • Demonstrate findings and conclusions using interpretative software
  • Communicate and participate in group work both face-to-face and virtually

Why is this the final?

Statistics is one the most challenging courses for instructors to teach (Conners, McCown, Roskos-Ewoldsen, 1998). Challenges include motivating students, helping students overcome their math anxiety, reconciling wide variations in students’ performance, and ensuring content retention. One of the most challenging aspects of an introductory statistics course is helping students see the relevance of the knowledge and skills they are learning to the issues in their lives. Students often leave a statistics course with more knowledge, but no change in their attitudes or perceived ability in statistics and worse perceptions of the usefulness of statistics (Sizemore & Lewandowski, 2009). Therefore, the goal of this assignment is to help students apply the knowledge and skills they’ve gained in this course to answering a research question that they consider to be relevant. We chose to break this project up into a 3-part semester-long final project because it is an introductory-level course and we wanted to be able to provide students with feedback and guidance throughout the assignment. We also wanted students to have time to practice communicating and collaborating via an online tool, like Microsoft Teams.

Technologies

 Microsoft Teams provides a cohesive platform for communications, working in groups, collecting information. Teams empowers students to create groups, work plans, documentation and to track deliverables in a way that allows them to be in charge of the workflow and to practice using a tool that is being used in the workplace across various industries. Students will get to add this to their resumes. 

SPSS and/or Excel will be used for data-analysis and to produce data visualizations. These tools have easy-to-navigate interfaces, and will produce insights for discussion.PowerPoint will be used to share proposed methodologies and insights.  The rubrics for evaluation are Word documents that will be collected via Teams and shared with each group.

Evaluation Rubric

The evaluation rubric is from the Association of American Colleges and Universities. This rubric is considered a standard in assessing quantitative reasoning and quantitative literacy skills nationwide. By using this students will gain the experience of using external criteria to frame their assessments. Students will also provide structured feedback to their colleagues. 

How NOT to Teach Online: A Story in Two Parts (Bonnie Stewart)

I decided to start this thread, even though I wasn’t exactly sure if we were going to start talking about these readings this week or next week, since all classes were instructionally paused/postponed last week. In any case, I think the reading scheduled on the syllabus for this week can be valuable at both times since we are currently dealing with our transition to distance learning.

In Bonnie Stewart’s How NOT to Teach Online: A Story in Two Parts, Stewart contributes two reflective texts about her prior experiences teaching online.  In one part of the article, Stewart speaks about her experience as a graduate student, teaching others how to teach an online M.Ed course and how she started the process completely wrong.  Stewart had prior experience as a high school teacher, but very limited experience with teaching online.  As opposed to approaching the seminar with a strong reason as to WHY it was important to be able to teach online, she approached it with WHAT to do with the technology. Stewart began focusing on the “where do I click?” “what is my password?” types of questions which turned out to be a huge failure for her.  This approach also proved to be an eye opening experience for Stewart, when a colleague disagreed with her approach. As a result of the disagreement, Stewart was able to participate in conversation with faculty that attended the seminar about what it actually can mean to connect with students across time and distance.  

Reading this article and the experiences shared by Stewart gave me the opportunity to take my own time to reflect on what the shift to “distance learning” can mean for my students.  There is an opportunity for my students to continue their learning practice together and now to find innovative ways for us to learn.  Among the challenging circumstances, I think that there is tiny silver lining that can be found in our shift to distance learning happening mid semester/school year.  The silver lining is that we have already started our process together in a face-to-face context and we have had the opportunity to connect with our students and colleagues at some level. There is no need for us to start over in the “getting to know you” phase. We have had an abrupt shift to our daily routines, however we have an even bigger opportunity to show our students that we actually are human, just like them.  We can show this by being explicit in our communication to them, by sharing our process, in hopes that they will feel comfortable to persevere through the challenging times.

Along with working with an undergrad to complete his capstone project with me (in-person field work and in-person lab work), I also tutor math to children, in-person.

Here are a few of the many questions that I have been asking myself when planning for distance learning with my students:

  • Why am I an educator/teacher?
  • Why are we (students and myself) learning this particular topic/subject?
  • How much is “too much” screen time for me?
  • Given that my students will be asked to be on the computer by their other teachers/instructors, how much is “too much” screen time for a particular session with me?
  • For students that struggle with being on a computer for an extended period of time, How can I minimize screen time with my sessions to allow for students to learn in ways that are optimal for their view of success? 

I’m posing these questions to share my process with all of you.  Feel free to share your answers to the questions (from your perspective) that I’ve posted or feel free to share other questions that you have been asking yourself related to your process towards distance learning.

How to make a pitch video

As you all know, instead of giving 5 minute presentations, we are asking you to make short videos instead. These should cover the same topics your 5 minute presentations would. These should be 5 minutes maximum, though you may find that you can pack a bit more in when you are making a video, so may be able to tell your story in 4 minutes or so.

This shift in delivery produces (at least) two new challenges for you: you need to think about how your content translates to video form, and you need to figure out how to make a video.

As I think we have talked about before, these kinds of presentations are an act of storytelling. Stories about what you have done so far, and cyberpunk fictions about your near-future adventures doing your project. All of the same elements of the proposal can fit into this video based format.

If it is helpful, you might consider thinking of these videos in terms of a Kickstarter campaign video. Kickstarter has produced some good guidance on this process. Here is some guidance from their Creator Handbook. Their advice should sound familiar:

Who are you? Introduce yourself, your team, and any similar work you’ve done (show some examples!).

What are you planning to make? The more details, the better. Sketches, samples, prototypes — it all helps backers get as excited as you are.

Where did this project come from? Tell people how you got the idea, and how much you’ve accomplished so far. Sharing the project’s history helps others understand the kind of work you do, and how you go about it.

What’s your plan, and what’s your schedule? Lay out a clear, specific timeline for what backers can expect.

What’s your budget? A simple breakdown lets people know you’ve thought things through and have a workable plan, so they can trust you to use funds wisely.

Why do you care? Tell people why you’re passionate about your project and committed to making it happen.

Kickstarter’s Creator Handbook

Even the most startup tech-bro approach to the pitch video retains the key storytelling aspects we have been talking about: The Problem, The Solution, The Characters, The Features. Kickstarter videos, like most advertising, ends with some kind of Call To Action. It is worth thinking about whether or not your videos are a form of advertising, or if there is some kind of Call To Action you can or should add.

How To

Making a video may seem like a technically daunting task, but it can be as simple as propping up your cell phone on a level surface, and telling the story (like the late night hosts have been doing this week!) Or recording your voice and screen as you work your way through a powerpoint presentations (like many of us have been doing as we record flipped-classroom lectures for our asynchronous online courses.) If you want to get fancy, you can… but you don’t have to!

Camera and Sound

You should know that sound is more important than image. If you notice, Colbert and some of the others are using their wireless headphones… as a substitute for a lavalier microphone (not because they are getting stage directions from the control booth.)

Lighting will make or break your image: always make sure the camera is between your subject (you!) and the light source. The natural midday light from apartment windows is amongst the most beautiful, even and flattering light around.

Keep your camera still (unless you holding your camera is part of your story telling). A quick search reveals dozens of hacks for cell phone tripods.

Editing

Here are some technical resources for editing and screen recording. For screen recording on MacOS, you can use Quicktime; just be sure you do some tests to make sure the sound is working (I made that mistake yesterday and recorded an entire 35 minute demo with no sound!!) Windows also has screen recording functionality, though it may not be as straightforward. If you are already getting used to Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, you can also use the recording function to generate a video of whatever you might do on screen.

You can do basic video editing in Quicktime. If you are MacOS, iMovie is your best bet for a simple effective editor, with lots of YouTube tutorials; you can even get it for iOS, so you could conceivably shoot and edit the whole thing on your iPhone. If you are on Windows, Hitfilm Express is the best reviewed free video editor (I haven’t used it before); you can also use some of the built in tools to do basic editing. If you want to get fancy, DaVinci Resolve is currently the favorite free full-featured video editing software.

But remember, you don’t have to get fancy! You just have to tell a good story.