Learning to Learn

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We always talk about wanting our students to be lifelong learners. The Common Core asks students to integrate multiple sources of information as they construct their own knowledge. Even though I teach other adults how to access resources and use them to make meaning, I still find that it's easier said than done when it comes to my own learning! I guess this is where the last vestiges of my digital immigrant background hides - in the way I interact with online courses as a learner.

I would suggest that statistics may be one of the more difficult classes to take (and probably teach) online. The content is complicated - there are multiple ways of doing most analyses, with your optimum choice dependent on on the type and source(s) of data. There are steps that must be followed, in the correct order, in order to get the appropriate defensible results. In addition, the way in which you report the data - the choice of words, the phrasing, the level of detail on all the different statistical tests - must follow a fairly prescribed format. Our textbook has good detail about the formulas and how to manually calculate levels of significance or variance, but since SPSS does that work for me I typically only about 10% of the textbook to be helpful. Our instructor provides an overview video, but it's hard to predict the questions that will arise. The videos in the course sometimes provide sufficient guidance, but often show only the how of SPSS use, but not the why. 

I have found that I better understand the material when I do some additional research about the concepts. There are face to face Intro to Statistics teachers who have posted their lecture notes online, which really helps me to build my background knowledge. It turns out that YouTube is great not only for learning how to make turkey gravy, but for detailed explanations of statistics. I can find examples of how, as well as explanations of why. But this is where being a lifelong learner is harder than it seems - I have to asks Google the right questions in order to get answers that do me the most good. I have to start by synthesizing the info provided in the class, and then craft a query that fills in the gaps. THAT has been challenging for me!

Just in case anyone else is struggling with statistics, here are some of my favorite resources:

• MIT OpenCourseware Intro to Statistics and Probability - Lecture Notes. This site helped me backfill some knowledge gaps I had in basic statistical concepts.
• TheRMUoHP Biostatistics Resource Channel by tacappaert. Don't let the channel name throw you - there are some excellent descriptive videos for using SPSS, each between 5 and 10 minutes long.
• ProfKelley's Analysis of Variance playlist on YouTube. These 2 videos really helped me understand ANOVA.
• Brandon Foltz on YouTube. I don't know why, but this guy has recorded a huge number of 30 minute lectures that do a really good job explaining the concepts. The playlists aren't all that well organized, but if you search for Brandon Foltz and Statistics 101, you'll find some great resources for building background knowledge.
• SPSS for Newbies playlist by Statisticsmentor.com on YouTube. By far the most detailed SPSS videos I found during the course, these videos range from the basic (importing data from Excel) to the more advanced (bivariate linear regression model). At about 20 minutes, these videos are a bit long, but it's tough to find a more comprehensive explanation.