IPS - Day 60

Today we wrapped up the hand-washing project. Students finished their posters at the start of class. As they were completing their posters I walked around and looked at the posters that were complete. Almost every one made no attempt to address randomness in their analysis or conclusion.

This was disappointing and reinforced the need to do things differently next semester. I addressed these issues on a group by group basis and talked with the class about the idea that every time they drew a sample they would see different results. They need to address these random fluctuations in results to be more certain of their conclusion. Next year I must do a better job of getting this idea across. I think more investigations with repeated sampling and trials along with discussing why the results differ each time may help.

As with the last poster, I had students look at what had been produced in class and at two posters created by previous classes. I then had the groups score their posters as before.

There was still about 10 minutes left in class, so I used this to help students understand how they could make use of the techniques we had learned. In this case, there is a bit of controversy about cell phone usage by students. In particular is a concern by some faculty here about students using twitter.

Personally, I have a twitter account and would like to make more use of it in the classroom. My issue has always been that less than half the students have or are willing to create a twitter account. In addition, I typically get resistance from parents about having their children using twitter.

I raised this topic with the class and about half were aware of the twitter controversy. I posed a question of interest: Is twitter usage by students and issue?

I asked students what data we could collect to address this issue. This produced a lively discussion and produced a far-ranging list of potential data:

• length of time a student is on twitter
• tweet topics
• frequency of tweets
• time of tweets
• number of tweets
• number of students with a twitter account
• number of students active on twitter
• hash tags used
• number and type of tweets tagged as favorite
• number and type of tweets that are re-tweeted

I then asked students to consider how this data could be collected. The majority of this data is available through retrospective observational studies. Some must be collected via a sample survey.

The class wondered if we were going to conduct this study. I told them it would be an interesting one to look at but it would take two or three weeks to do it properly. I just became aware of this controversy on Wednesday. Had I known about it a week or two ago I would have definitely had the class tackle this study.

The point was grasped by the students and it was a good way to make connections and close out the final week of class.

Visit the class summary for a student's perspective and to view the lesson slide.