Presentation given at RC33 9 July 2012

1. Sharing Best Practice for Teaching
Quants using Open Educational
Resources
Dr Jackie Carter, University of
Manchester and SCORE, The Open
University, UK
July 2012: slides shared under CC:BY

2. 200 years 200 countries 4 minutes
“I came to understand the world http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo
by visiting it. I use statistics to
check my understanding and to http://howtomakeadifference.net/2012/03/28/hans-
tell others.”
CC BY-NC 2.0
rosling/

3. Overview
• Background
– My role - data and Open Educational Resources
– Context, introduction to the project
• The Project
– Different perspectives for quants teaching
• Academics; Subject librarians; Policy practitioners;
Media
• Findings and next steps

4. “Data, data, data. I cannot make
bricks without clay”
• Socioeconomic Data
Services
– Economic and Social
Data Service
– Census Dissemination
Unit
• Case studies
• Telling Stories project
• Use of data in teaching
(Teaching Tools)

5. Coming soon: an integrated service
UK Data Service
Other data
services
Census Support
Service

6. Context: Stats and QS/QM
• Royal Statistical Society’s
getstats 10-year
campaign
• UK Policy drivers – STEM
skills for social sciences
• Quantitative Methods (QM)
/ Quantitative Skills (QS) /
Statistical Literacy
• strategically important
and vulnerable subject

7. Statistical Literacy
• Statistical literacy brings a range of
thinking and practical skills that
include: knowledge; comprehension;
application; analysis; synthesis; and
evaluation. It enables a feel for
data, including being able to support
an argument with evidence, but also
being aware of the variety of
interpretations that are possible from
those data. A statistically literate
person will apply common sense to
problems and appreciate that
information that is gleaned from data
will have uncertainty attached to
it. Becoming statistically literate
…takes time for the ideas and concepts
• MacInnes, 2009
to mature, experience with
applications to develop and will • Source:
depend upon the individual’s aptitude www.esrc.ac.uk/_images/Undergraduate_quantitative_resear
ch_methods_tcm8-2722.pdf
to appreciate that variability is all
around us and impacts on everyone.
Cockcroft, 1982 ‘Mathematics Counts’

8. Context: Open Educational Resources
• UNESCO 10-years of
OER
• Paris 2012 Declaration
• UK Policy drivers
– 10+ years of investment
in teaching resources
– 3 years+ funding to
create and release OER
– Jorum – national
repository for OER

9. What are Open Educational
Resources?
• OER infoKit at
https://openeducationalresources.pbwor
ks.com/w/page/24836480/Home
• Open Licences e.g. CC
Creativecommons.org
• Reuse, Revise, Remix, R
edistribute

11. Building bridges between worlds:
SCORE Project
• Social science data in
ugrad teaching
• Open Educational
Resources
…aims are to share teaching
resources and expertise in those
institutions already working to
upskill students in QM; and to
focus on resources that address
global issues by using real world
data

12. (O)ER for QM in UK?
• ESDS teaching resources
• methods.hud.ac.uk
• DeSTRESS - depository of statistical
resources for social sciences
http://destress.pbworks.com/w/page/42308116/Welcome
• Methods@Manchester (not CC)
• RESTORE restore.esrc.ac.uk (not CC)
www.jisc.ac.uk/inform/inform33/OpenWorking.html
• Jorum resources
• QM ESRC pages
www.esrc.ac.uk/funding-and-guidance/tools-and-
resources/undergraduate-QM/index.aspx

13. OER for QM beyond the UK?
• OPOSSEM: Online Portal
for Political Science
Education in Methodology
opossem.org
• MERLOT
www.oer-quality.org/tag/qa/
• Others?
• Google????

14. Collecting case studies
• Identify willing
respondents from:
– quantitative-methods-
teachers mailing list
– Media contacts
– Policy practitioners
• Semi-structured
interviews
myitzonecasestudies.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/case-studies.jpg

15. Academics’ Perspective
• Interview with academics
from University of
Cardiff, UK (clip)
• Quotes from LSE100
course (and online
interviews)
• Other interviews at Leeds
Metropolitan;
Manchester; Manchester
Metropolitan; Plymouth.

16. Academic Librarian’s Perspective
‘I never thought I’d ..role is about offering
do this’ support for students
• Social Science Data
who have a Resources (SSDR) Site
substantive research Representatives mailing list
question, but don’t
always know where to
start looking for • IASSIST Int Assoc for SS Info
data, or what data Services & Technology
exists to help them (need to join)
with their research
“[economics] undergraduates do a dissertation • This case study will be
in the third year. They have to go and find
made available at
data….probably the most popular dataset is
the World Development Indicators from the www.esds.ac.uk/resources
World Bank because it’s so big and covers such /datainuse/casestudies.asp
a good mix of social and economic indicators
and some financial stuff…’

17. Policy Practitioner Perspective
• This job..requires a certain
level of confidence and ability
to interact with the statistics
• I wanted to develop research
skills, including quantitative, ..
at least to be able to
understand statistics to a
• You need to think about level...[to] help me career
wise..
how to articulate [the
stats] in a way that's • Recorded talk to students at:
media friendly http://stream.manchester.ac.u
k/Play.aspx?VideoId=10926
• Statistics are impactful

18. Media Training Perspective
• BBC School of Journalism • Focus on open data
training course(s) - – Political party donations
“Sources, scoops and
spreadsheets” • Tools for data exploration
– Excel including pivot
• Follow up of stories after tables
the course
• http://delicious.com/ston
• Data-driven journalism epeople
• http://datajournalismhan
dbook.org/

19. Will sharing resources and practice
help?
“My first reaction to sharing resources
was one of horror! I remembered days
spent writing .. my teaching materials
and felt very protective of them – why
would I then share them with someone
else? …”
“Context is everything in QM teaching and
I started to feel that I was almost certainly
going through the same laborious process
that hundreds of lecturers before me had
gone through themselves. Why we’re we
replicating this process in isolation? Think
how much time we could save if we pooled
resources! …I decided that I didn’t want to
continue the ‘cycle of abuse’ along the
lines of “well I had to do it on my own so
why should I share my hard-earned
experience and resources with someone
else?”

20. Where’s the evidence for OER?
• Case studies
– www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/de
tail/oer/oer-phase-3-case-studies
• SCORE outputs
– www8.open.ac.uk/score/outputs
• Synthesis and Evaluation
report (Oct 2012)
– www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MU
LTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/themes/jisc_
ukoer_david_kernohanpdf.pdf
• Open Education SIG
• Annual OER conference
– OER13, Nottingham, UK

21. Sharing openly?

22. Walled (succulent) gardens with open
gates?

23. OER Practice is like climbing a ladder
• Embed OER into existing
systems and services but
follow up with targeted
support
• Identify champions within
the department and
capitalise on their
enthusiasm & knowledge
• Engage staff
developers, librarians, LT-
ists: build a network of
support
• Collect evidence &
examples
• Recognition = Time & Space
to experiment
Dr Joanna Wild

24. New projects: University of
Manchester
• Teaching QM in disciplinary • Patterns in Politics and
context: integrating QM and Society
evidence into the Social Science – The University of Manchester already
undergraduate curriculum aims to integrate secondary data on
society and politics into undergraduate
course units in the Social Sciences. This
• Various modules across years 1-3 project aims to widen, deepen, and
– Data and The Media disseminate best practice in the
– The Survey Method in Social Research integration of quantitative data and
quantitative methods into the
– Engaging Social Research curriculum.
– Sociology of Personal Life
– Sociology of Spiritual Life
– Racism and ethnicity in the UK
• www.ccsr.ac.uk/research/QMCIProjec
– Politics of Policy Making t.htm
– Power and Protest
– Elections and Voters – British Politics • www.ccsr.ac.uk/research/documents
since 1940 /PIPSdetails.pdf
– Introduction to Comparative Politics

25. “OER is a very young concept. People who live it every day
are sort of like 'why aren't more people doing it?’ It's still
very young and it will come of age. We will look back ten
years from now we will see the OER movement as the single
biggest change for creating access to high quality higher
education for people on the planet - most people just don't
realise it yet.
And where we've got to do some work is search and retrieval
and application - that's still the great frontier. We're not
doing a good enough job in equipping our educators to
participate; we're not doing a good enough job in enabling
our students to find it and do something meaningful with it”.
Professor Martin Bean; VC Open University, UK
Questions & discussion: Bridging the divide: visions of education futures through technology. Going Global Conference 2012

26. Jean Spector http://fr.fotopedia.com/items/jeans-AJA3RruQUkA
Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works

27. Acknowledgements
• Interviewees
– Sin Yi Cheung, Luke Sloan, Surhan Cam; Rob Evans, Malcolm Williams
– Jeanette Harwood
– Neville Davies, John Marriott
– Helen Riley
– Carole Sutton
– Graham Whitham
– And others
• SCORE
– Mentor – Tony Hirst
– Fellows

28. Thanks and Questions
• Jackie Carter
• @JackieCarter
• j.carter@manchester.ac.uk