Video and visual resources & technologies in teaching statistics

This presentation takes a wide definition of visual to include video and presentation technologies. It discusses the availability of video resources about stats (conceptual and SPSS tutorials) and about some of the other visual technologies that are used and could be used here. This includes drawing/annotation and recording systems that can be used to create video materials (a bit like the Kahn University videos) - including some interesting apps on the iPad (e.g. Explain Everything). It comments on the pros and cons of identifying good videos and of using them in sessions and as additional course resources

STEM in Teaching Qualitative Research

Abstract The results from the first stage of a project examining the use of computer assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS) and mixed methods teaching in qualitative analysis to promote numeric and technology skills in undergraduate students. Results from a survey of qualitative research teachers carried out as part of the project will be presented. Overview This paper will report the preliminary results from an online survey of teachers of qualitative research methods (Survey 2), which has been undertaken as part of a project to determine what barriers there are to the inclusion in undergraduate qualitative methods teaching of skills relating to the use of CAQDAS programs and the use of mixed methods in research designs. The project will also try to discover and summarise good practice and to develop guidelines for such teaching content that can be used at undergraduate level, though the full details of this will not be available until after the conference. There is little current reference to technology or number in both the use of qualitative methods in social research and especially the teaching of qualitative methods, particularly at undergraduate level. The one exception to this is the discussion of the use of CAQDAS programs in several textbooks aimed at undergraduate users. However, there is no strong evidence that this translates into widespread use of the programs in undergraduate teaching in the UK. Indeed in a web-based survey of teachers of qualitative methods (Survey 2) that I carried out for a previous HEA funded project (REQUALLO) I found only 6% of departments that replied to the survey used CAQDAS at undergraduate level, although much higher proportions used it at postgraduate level. At the moment, at undergraduate level, there is a distinct inequality in software use between qualitative and quantitative research methods teaching. Almost all undergraduate courses on quantitative methods will, at some point, cover the use of statistics and will require students to use software (such as SPSS). There are two factors that might begin to challenge this comparatively low level of software usage in qualitative methods: the increasing use of CAQDAS in research and the growth of interest in mixed methods approaches. In the case of the former, there is evidence for a strong growth in the use of CAQDAS in social research. There is also a growth in the popularity of mixed methods designs, not only in the number of published papers using such an approach, but also in the number of PhD students undertaking such projects. To support this, in the last few years, many of the major publishers of CAQDAS programs have included functionality in their software that integrates quantitative data with the qualitative analysis. This includes a range of data mining, keyword in context searches and cluster analysis techniques as well as the ability to import quantitative case attribute data that can be used in the analysis. All this is integrated with the basic thematic coding system the software supports. There are, however, significant barriers to the increased use of number and software in undergraduate qualitative methods teaching. In Survey 1 I asked teachers why the software was not used at undergraduate level. Common reasons given included, no time (17%), lack of teachers’ skills in the software (13%), no funding for site licences or local support for software (12%) and most commonly, that it would take too long to teach (24%). However, significantly, given the antagonism of some qualitative researcher to software use, only 3% said that the software was not used in teaching because it does not support the methodology or the theoretical approach they used. This situation is changing. Many UK universities now hold site licences for the software (just as they do for statistical software). About a year ago, QSR, the publisher of the market leading NVivo software, told me that 74 UK universities held site licences and there are several who hold similar licence for competing programs. Nevertheless several barriers remain: 1. Lack of skills in both CAQDAS use and mixed methods amongst qualitative research methods teachers at undergraduate level. 2. There are few good exemplars, usable at undergraduate level, of how software and numeric skills can enhance qualitative analysis. 3. Lack of OERs suitable for undergraduate use that tackle this issue (but there are some QSR videos on this). This paper will report on the current state of skills teaching and of available resources with a focus on the U

Outreach with video: Using YouTube and screen and lecture capture to reach thousands.

This talk will report on my experience of creating a variety of types of video learning resources and disseminating them, mainly through YouTube where my channel has over 300 subscribers and over 100,000 views. The videos have been created either using Camtasia screen capture software or by videoing lecture sessions. I will discuss some of the techniques for enhancing the video in pedagogically useful ways and some of the production issues for ensuring high quality production. Then I will discuss the dissemination of the videos. I have done this mainly through the OnlineQDA web-site and through YouTube. I will discuss some of the issues of producing YouTube videos and uploading them, such as length, sound quality, metadata and titles and some of the feedback they have engendered. I will conclude by arguing that YouTube is a way of disseminating our outputs in a way that can extend the profile of the University and can promote our reputation for good quality!  teaching and research. <http://www.youtube.com/user/GrahamRGibbs

Learning research methods with video

Muller et al. (2007) suggest that video used in learning physics too often just presents just the correct explanations and there is no way of telling if the learner has internalised this correct view or has maintained any pre-existing misunderstanding. Their research suggests that people learn physics better from video explanations when first they are presented with incorrect understandings of the phenomena. Can this approach work in the social sciences? I chose the area of social research methods and in particular depth interviews and survey sampling to test out these ideas. In the interview case, the viewer is presented with a poorly undertaken interview and is asked to find the faults, helped by an outline of good practice and a (later) commentary on the interview. Then an interview exemplifying good practice with commentary follows. In the sampling case, both incorrect explanations by teachers and students’ own attempts at explaining key ideas in sampling are presented first before a model-based explanation of the correct principles is given. Early evaluation of the interview video suggests that the poor example enables them better to understand the advantages of the examples of good practice in the following interview

CAQDAS teaching in the UK

This presentation reports the results of two online surveys: one in 2011 on teachers of qualitative research and the second in 2013 of those teaching computer assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS) in the UK. Results show that qualitative research methods teaching is buoyant and popular and that teaching about the CAQDAS software is common at postgraduate level. However, CAQDAS is taught much more rarely at undergraduate level. This is in direct contrast with the situation for statistics software such as SPSS. Statistical analysis using software is commonly taught at undergraduate level across a very wide range of social science disciplines. The surveys identified the range and diversity of qualitative methods taught in universities but, in the UK at least, the dominance of one program in the use of CAQDAS. The data also reveal the reasons respondents gave for the lack of undergraduate teaching of CAQDAS which included lack of staff skills, insufficient space in the curriculum and ideological objections. The paper will conclude by examining a small number of case studies of the teaching of CAQDAS to identify the practical and pedagogic challenges faced by the teachers involve

Learning and qualitative data analysis with information technology: the role of exploration

Over the past 20 years there have been rapid developments in IT to create software that supports both learning and qualitative research. This thesis examines the design and use of that software, and argues that the exploratory approach in both learning and analysis produces superior outcomes. As such, the exploratory approach is seen as one that is particularly well supported by the software. A range of learning software and objects is discussed: Correlation Explorer, coMentor, learning websites, reusable learning objects, open educational resources, and videos. These are successive attempts by myself, and others, to develop software and other objects that support high quality learning. They do this in a variety of ways: by creating learning tools that promote exploration, by encouraging online collaboration and sharing, and by providing materials that can be used in a range of learning contexts. Some of the problems of their use are discussed, such as mistaken conceptions, and finding and adapting learning objects. In a parallel fashion, this thesis argues that the development of software to assist qualitative data analysis has supported a range of analytic approaches. By their very nature these tend to be exploratory – the thesis argues that the core of qualitative analysis involves exploration of the data. The new analytic tools the software offers afford especially good support to exploratory analyses. These tools include text searching, code hierarchies, code queries, and the use of charts and diagrams

New pedagogies and new resources in qualitative research teaching

For many years teaching research methods was a small-scale affair often done using an apprenticeship approach whereby the student learned from their supervisor by doing and trying the activities required. The details of data gathering and data analysis in qualitative research were treated as a dark art, to be gained only by long experience in the field. Now, there is a need to teach these methods to large numbers of students, at undergraduate level and from a wide range of disciplines. Fortunately there are some excellent textbooks on both data gathering and data analysis, but some of the character of the apprenticeship learning experiences is still not captured by texts and, beside, many students learn better in other ways. This presentation examines three sources of resources that go beyond the textbook: a) Data sets for qualitative data analysis, b) multimedia resources on qualitative data analysis, and c) general video resources on qualitative methods (including lecture capture). It considers the sources of these resources and some of the issues of their creation and use in teaching and learning. The presentation concludes with an exploration of some of the pedagogic issues the use of these resources raise, such as availability, discoverability, quality and their embedding in teaching programmes

Workshop: Producing educational videos: design and workflow issues

Part 1 of the workshop was a quick survey, with examples, of the range of educational videos produced by academics and students along with a consideration of their pedagogic functions. Part 2 was hands on and participants worked in pairs developing a script and visual storyboard for their own video idea and providing critical support to their partner’s ideas. Part 3 was a general discussion of these designs, how they had been refined or simplified and how they might be used in teaching and learning. Participants learned about the range of videos used in education and how they might be used in teaching. They learned about the range of multimedia that can be used in videos that makes them different from lectures, books, supervisions etc. And they developed an understanding of how they could develop a workflow and a division of labour with technical experts in making a video

Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis: NVivo, MAXQDA, Atlas.ti, QDAMiner, HyperResearch

This presentation starts with brief history of CAQDAS (Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis) and identifies the main features of the software. It looks at the pros and cons of the most popular programs and then examines the main activities in establishing and analyzing a project in the software

Going the distance: supporting a teaching team to move to distance learning. A Case Study. How ready are academics for the ‘Only Connect’ world?

Introduction The generally positive and conflict free version of the future portrayed in the FutureLab ‘Only Connect’ World suggests that students, at least, will be familiar with a democratised, collaborative, dispersed, asynchronous and digitised learning landscape. However, teaching staff with their experience of conflict between researcher and educator identities along with university systems supporting them are less prepared for this world. This paper reports on the experience of converting a face-to-face Master’s course to a wholly online, distance learning (DL) course largely following the Open University DL model but based on using and creating open educational resources (OER). The original course was an MSc in social research methods and had been running for 17 years, but it needed to reach a wider recruitment market. Two key aspects of this conversion were that many of the teaching team were not experienced in teaching DL, and that the changeover was not a special project, with special funding, but a run-of-the mill course development. The development was taken through the standard university approval process but as a fully DL development it had to meet two specific criteria: the QAA DL precepts and our university DL regulations. Both, to varying degrees, assume that the course development and/or the course delivery will be undertaken by fully experienced staff. The teaching team was overwhelmingly a research active and research focussed group of academics and thus well qualified in the subject matter of the course, but although many had taught the previous, in-person Master’s for many years, they had little demonstrable experience with DL. Methods This dilemma was addressed using a mentoring approach. An academic from another subject area in the school, who already had experience of leading a DL course was brought in to assist the team. Both he and the lead technical support had formal DL qualifications and this met the formal university validation criteria. The academic worked with another teaching team member (who is a NTF and has experience of technology based and distance learning teaching) as key facilitators/mentors to the remainder of the teaching team. In addition, the technical support team helped with the creation of the OERs we needed and in running the webinar and discussion software we were using. There were several key tasks: 1. Convert existing face-to-face curricula to OER based DL versions 2. Find, appraise and adapt existing OER materials 3. Create new OER materials 4. Develop teacher skills with DL pedagogy and associated tools 5. Develop open access web pages for the OER materials and closed VLE pages for registered students. Two pilot modules were offered in Jan 2014 and the student experience was evaluated using a range of learning analytics, including a number of in-depth interviews. Results Initial curriculum development/conversion was undertaken using an Australian design system. One of the mentors undertook this conversion for one module and other module leaders followed the model to ensure consistency in teaching approach. To develop teacher skills in DL software and pedagogy, we ran a series of staff development sessions, and used the two pilot modules to modify our pedagogic designs and to disseminate DL teaching skills more broadly. Attendance at and scheduling of these sessions was problematic and in some cases we had to resort to distance learning approaches to the skills development. OER materials were mainly videos and one mentor had considerable experience in making them. He advised other teachers on the options and the pedagogic focus of the OERs. Some teachers were reluctant to appear in person in these OERs and this was addressed by a combination of screen capture approaches and the use of already existing OERs – fortunately common in the areas concerned. Discussion A key tension in this development was between the research active and research focus of the teaching team and the need for the teachers to acquire new skills in both software use and in distance learning requirements. The individualistic focus of the researchers was often at odds with the collaborative, connected and communal needs of DL. Consistency in curriculum design helped here as the teachers could easily adapt their modules using the model. In the case of skills acquisition, the two pilot modules were crucial. This diminished the initial load on the mentors whilst technical and pedagogic experience was built up and it enabled the establishment of guidelines for good practice in OER production, curriculum design, DL pedagogic practice and in the software use on a relatively small scale to start with