Month: October 2020

Teaching kids about statistics doesn’t have to be spooky

By Lindsay Lamb

When the pandemic first hit, Andrea and I wrote a few posts about working at home with our kids. I’ll be honest – I thought it was something that would be over sooner rather than later. Now that we are nearly 8 months in to working and learning from home, honestly, not much has changed. If, like me, your child is still at home learning you might find yourself in need of a break from “zoom-school.”

One thing that got my family through a particularly difficult fall was getting excited about Halloween. Traditionally, our neighborhood goes all out for Halloween. Nearly every house has decorations and several streets are shut down to throw a huge block party. Houses on these streets are open for all to enter. Some are turned into haunted houses and others showcase incredible decorations inside the home (and hand out top notch candy). My daughter had the time of her life with two of her closest friends last year… while my son (who was a little over 1 at the time) threw in the towel rather early in a fit of tears. Oh well, I thought, maybe next year!

Oops.

Since our neighborhood block party and traditional trick-or-treating won’t be an option this year, I knew I needed to do something to keep my daughter excited about Halloween (which is her favorite holiday). As we were walking around the neighborhood one evening admiring the decorations, I thought of something fun for us to do instead (reminder: I’m a data nerd, so my idea of fun might be different from yours!): document all of the Halloween decorations in our neighborhood to determine which decorations were most popular. I made all of us (including my husband and Hayes) hypothesize which decoration would win. I also included a few more guiding questions for Hannah including, would we see more Halloween decorations the closer we got to Halloween? Which streets (or blocks) had the most decorations? What was the spookiest house? Which house had the most decorations?

Every day Hannah took off on her bike with lightning speed and I trailed behind her with Hayes and Lola (our dog) in tow. We stopped to take pictures and document all of the decorations we saw (which was a great way to chat with neighbors). Hannah never complained about riding her bike (which she started to do frequently in the summer); she was on a mission. My little scientist had to collect data.

In addition to Hannah truly enjoying the project, Hayes began honing his skills at spying skeletons, spiderwebs, and pumpkins. I was grateful to get us out of the house, forget about all the seriousness going on in the world these days, and see them truly be happy if even for a bit. When we got home, I helped Hannah document all of the decorations we saw. She made a list of each kind of decoration (e.g., skeletons, spiderwebs) and added a check for each time she saw a house with that particular decoration.

  • Hannah documenting Halloween decorations.
  • Hannah working on her graph.

Hannah tallied how many houses we saw each day (28 was an all-time max!), and how many of each decoration we saw that day. It was fun! As an added bonus, I was sneakily getting her to practice handwriting, math, reading, and PE! It was great!

On our last day, she was excited to see the results come in – although we had a pretty good guess what the results would be.

I helped her count up the decorations, figured out what we saw the most (and least) of, and then we made a graph.

Hannah’s graph

Then I showed her how to make the graph in excel and talked to her about percentages. As we worked, I talked about how I do this type of thing in my job so I can help people make sense of things they want to count. Like the number of students who are engaged in online learning, the number of students from low-income communities who graduate high school and college, the number of high risk students who experience academic improvements because of a community based support model, and the number of teen parents who believe their relationships have improved as a result of an program designed to strengthen relationships.

Our excel graph using percentages. Hannah helped pick the icons and colors of course 😉

Now she at least some idea why I lock myself in the closet for a couple hours at a time every day… and maybe she thinks it is worth it. Who knows, we might even have a future data nerd in the family.

When designing a survey, how many response options are okay?

By Lindsay Lamb

Source: https://cat.xula.edu/

Recently, Andrea and I were speaking at a conference. Our session was entitled, Survey Design 101. We were going back to the basics with our audience. We walked them through the importance of designing good survey questions. We gave examples and cautioned them about being mindful of the wording of questions and selecting the right response options. Our goal in the session was to provide participants with a few strategies to make sure they are actually getting the answers to their main evaluation questions.

As we were talking about how to avoid common pitfalls of bad survey design (e.g., keeping surveys short, avoiding double-barreled questions, using easy to understand language), one of our attendees asked how many response options should be included for each question.

Our answer? It depends.

I know, I know. That is probably not the answer you want to hear, but honestly and truly, it does depend! Here are just some of the things it depends on:

  1. It depends on the age of your participants.
    • Are your participants younger? If your participants are younger (think under 3rd grade), you probably only want 3 response options. Think along the lines of Always, Sometimes, Never as good response options. Responses need to be clear and easily distinguishable from each other. Kids at this age think in very black and white terms, so design survey questions and responses accordingly.
    • Are your participants older? If your participants are adults or in 3rd grade or above, you can consider using 5 to 7 response options. Some researchers use 9 response options. Sometimes using seven or more response options is exactly what you need. Perhaps responses tend to stack up on the extremes, and you want more spread in their responses so you can understand the subtle gradations in participants’ perceptions. Personally, I find it difficult to distinguish between some response options if there are 7 or more, but maybe that is just me. On the other hand, you can also err on including too few response options (e.g., Yes and No only). Sometimes asking too few questions limits the information you could get from participants. Maybe most participants’ viewpoints are not at either extreme (always or never) but are instead somewhere in the middle. Knowing this information will help program staff identify which elements or concepts are most favorable or least favorable. Unsure on how many responses to include? Test out your survey!
  2. It depends on whether or not you want a mid-range response option. In some cases having a mid-range response option (e.g., sometimes) will result in most people selecting this as an option. Other times, this will push people to either extreme. My advice? Know your audience. Younger participants tend to select the mid-range options while older students do not. Unsure? Test out your survey!
  3. It depends on the type of response.
    • If your response options involve frequency, make sure the frequencies are sequential and can be easily recalled and make sense based on the question. Make sure the responses capture the frequency and are timelines or frequencies that are realistic. This should help you determine the number of response options.
    • If you are unsure you are capturing the right responses, allow participants to write in their own response with an “other” and text-box option. This is particularly effective when you are piloting a survey and can give you insight into responses you may never have considered otherwise.

Regardless of how many response options you use, I strongly recommend using Likert scales. Likert scales help anchor response options and allow them to be more easily be analyzed.

One more thing to consider as you are designing your survey: if you have the time and bandwidth, test your survey! You can test your survey with a sub-sample of your larger survey population, you can test your survey with a sample of similar participants who are not in your study, test your survey with program staff, or test your survey with family and friends (probably the easiest, and likely the most unbiased!). After you test your survey, ask participants some follow-up questions about the response options and survey questions. They should be able to tell you if the responses match the questions, if there are too many survey responses, too few responses, or if the responses are just right.

These are just some of our internal rules of thumb, but I am sure there are so many more. Do you have some rules of thumb you would like to share with us? Drop us a line and let us know!

Back to the basics with PowerPoint

By Lindsay Lamb

Recently, Andrea and I were asked to create a mini-course on survey design for a virtual conference. Given our years of experience creating, researching, administering, and analyzing survey data, this seemed easy enough. We decided to call it Survey design 101. We were excited –this presentation was going to be fun! (Okay, that is nerdy, but we have to find things that motivate us these days!)

I got to work on the PowerPoint, and boy did I have a lot to say! I remembered all I have learned from my data viz heroes Tufte, Stephanie Evergreen (who just posted a great blog on changes to make to your powerpoint to take it form looking great in-person to looking great in a webinar), and Ann Emery. I used color purposefully, only included points I considered integral to the presentation and trimmed my content. Then I trimmed again.

I was also motivated to keep the presentation short. I wanted to ensure there was ample time for questions, and wanted to have some time for interaction – at least interactions over chat. I sent a draft over to our colleague to review and her feedback was clear, and also a little unexpected: remove bullet points (maybe have one or two per slide, but no more), and if bullet points are important, make them their own slide. Oh, and add more images and icons.

The icons and image piece was fine (you all know how much Andrea and I love icons and images) but I was worried about making my presentation too long by pulling apart the bullet points. It felt a little weird only having one sentence or thought on a slide, but what the heck. As always, Andrea helped by adding some flair to our slides.

Here is how we took one slide and pulled it apart.

Here is what our slide looked like before

…And here is how some of our slides looked after the revamp.

Here are some slides containing the same information, but each point is presented separately making our points clearer.

Importantly, all of the information is the same. The only difference is that the information in the first slide is pulled apart so each point can stand alone. If the point couldn’t stand alone, we removed it. We kept the ‘title’ of the slide (Pitfall #1 of surveys – Too long!) the same for consistency in all 3 slides.

Although I thought adding more slides to the presentation would make the presentation itself longer, the amount of time we spent discussing each point was the same.

As a final note, pulling apart information into multiple slides is even more important now as people are passively watching webinars rather than actively participating in-person during conferences. Unfortunately, our attention spans are even worse now that we are working from home (and if you are anything like me these days, you are likely watching a presentation while also helping your 5 year old with school, keeping your two year old from turning your dog into a Jackson Pollock painting, and ensuring everyone is quiet while your husband talks with state leaders), so keeping your presentation moving at a relatively fast clip will help with this issue… Maybe 😉

Virtual learning best practice: Expertly using technology

Teaching English Online to Chinese Kids with VIPKID
Source. https://pagingsupermom.com/teaching-english-online/

This is the fourth in our series identifying best practices in online learning. As stated in earlier posts, supporting students’ (as well as educators and their families) social and emotional needs must come first in any learning environment, particularly a virtual one in the midst of a pandemic. Next, educators should foster building relationships with each other, with students and with families. After establishing these foundations – which must be nourished throughout the academic year – educators can begin focusing on creating engaging content. One critical component to build a successful learning environment is to ensure that educators, students, and families know how to use the technology provided to them.

Create a virtual learning “studio.”  Moving learning into an online environment is hard. Instead of using the first few days of class to practice new technology applications, create a space to practice delivering the content before working with students. Doing so will add an air of professionalism and create a smoother transition to online learning on the first day. There are two major components to this aspect of online learning: visual and audio.  Importantly, neither of these require a large investment in equipment.

Visual professionalism includes:

  • Adding a webcam or setting up the internal camera so that the you face is well-framed (you might need to stack some books under your computer).
  • Ensuring good lighting by placing one or more lighting sources (e.g., window, lamp) in front of the camera.
  • Dressing for the occasion.
  • Setting up the background. Some instructors have gotten creative with backgrounds and have held class in different locations in their homes on different days to spark student interest. Some educators have made scavenger hunts with their backgrounds – use this tool to your advantage!

Audio professionalism includes:

  • Having a quiet space for the meeting, free from audio distractions.
  • Ensuring that the microphone is good and does not echo
  • Speaking in a clear, engaging style (you might need to slow down so learners can stay engaged)

Educators should practice video sessions with a friend and/or record a practice session to practice, review, and refine. Over time, this process will become smoother, and taking these initial steps will ensure both educators and students are comfortable with the process.

Get to Know Your Learning Management System (LMS). Additionally, educators should take the time before classes meet to get to know the features of their online LMS and/or group meeting platform. Can participants chat in your platform? Can participants use a chat feature? Can you create breakout sessions? Do students and families know how to use your various platforms? Make sure you take the time to answer these questions and familiarize yourself, as well as students and families, prior to the first day of class. Also, be sure you (and students and families) know where to go, and with whom to contact, for technical support.

For example, use features embedded in Zoom to create polls, break out rooms, share screens, and take quick temperature checks of participants using emojis (e.g., clap, thumbs up, etc.). Doing so helps make learners feel safe to share answers, stories, ideas, and to speak up when experiencing a technical issue and need help. This gives learners a voice when they could have easily fallen through the cracks.

Use the chat function.  Public speaking is a strong fear for many adults and children, and sometimes it can be challenging to get people to speak out – especially when the topic is quite personal.  One of the benefits of virtual meeting programs is the simple text chat feature. Educators who are working with groups of more than 5 participants at a time would be wise to become familiar with the chat feature and to encourage its use. This feature is clearly better suited for older students, and is also useful for family members helping younger students engage in online learning.

Use technology to meet the need – rather than finding the technology first. Most importantly, use technology and platforms that will actually help fill a need rather than finding a technology application and forcing their desired content or need into that application. There are a lot of great educational technology resources out there, and not all of them will be right for you or your students. For example, technology can be used to engage students by sending messages to families (using platforms like GroupMe or Class Dojo), texting students an interesting question for them to respond to during synchronous or asynchronous gatherings, creating individualized assignments with video, and using Google voice/voice memos/videos to provide comments and feedback on students’ assignments. Similarly, students can share their work using video (such as Loom), images or Google voice/voice memos. This creates personalization in the learning and allows students to showcase their work and talk about it without interruption from peers.

As you move forward in an online learning environment, we hope these best practices will help you navigate these challenging times. If you want to learn more, stay tuned for our summative report!