Research

The Data Clubs project is built upon Design-Based Research (DBR), in which key staff create the modules, teach them, observe students as they engage with the data sets, and make revisions to student activities and data sets based on their observations. The team has used this process to complete at least two iterations of each of the three modules by field testing in Massachusetts and Maine with a variety of students and revising based on the results.

The project also researches students’ engagement in data (via the Data Dispositions Survey) and students’ understanding of how to examine data sets in CODAP (see Interview Questions).

Content Divider Dots

Data Dispositions Survey

The Data Clubs team has designed a survey tool to measure participants’ dispositions towards data at the start and finish of each module. Data Dispositions has three categories of survey items: Fascination, Competencies, and Values. Participants answer questions about their engagement with and curiosity about data, and their understanding of its relevance and real world uses, as well as self-assessing their own competencies.

Survey results indicate that most participants began and ended their Data Clubs experience with a fairly high degree of curiosity, persistence, and confidence.

View the Data Dispositions Survey here.

Click here to see the Fall 2019 survey results.

Click here to see the Fall 2020 survey results.

Click here to see the overall data dispositions results.

Data Dispositions is adapted from instruments developed by the Activation Lab.

Content Divider Dots

Interview

The Data Clubs team is currently developing and testing an interview for use with individual participants that examines their ability to work with real data sets in CODAP. The interview questions will explore participants’:

  • ability to ask and address appropriate questions of the data;
  • skills at searching for and articulating patterns within the data or relationships between attributes; and
  • understanding of data distributions and the structure of data. 

Click here to see the interview questions.

 

[Before the Data Clubs experience] I would look at data … and think that it's just a bunch of dots on a graph, but now I actually can see what those dots mean."

 – Data Clubs participant