today we did (as a class) our first real work in R, and my impression was that it went okay. my sense was that most people didn't get through even the problems from the text that i'd assigned, much less on to the
new project of uploading and looking at the class questionnaire data that i collected the first day. personally, though, i'm okay with that. i wonder how others feel.
maybe someone will comment and let me know... hint, hint
:)
5 comments:
Hey Mike,
You're right, time really seems to fly by in this class - maybe our brains just aren't running full speed yet at 8. I think today's class went well for a first day running what, to many people, is a new program. I think the class will be able to get more done once we're used to the program and adapt to the style of the book. I know I, for one, ordered the book online and just got it yesterday, so I didn't have as much time to go through it as I'd hoped.
All in all, I think this class is going great so far. :)
Hey Mike,
I really enjoyed you telling me about the reasons you use "R" the other day after class. I have to admit that since I have never heard of it before and because it seems a little harder than other packages, I questioned your logic about it. However, I think that you should share your rationale with the rest of the class. Perhaps we will learn to appreciate "R" more.
Mike,
I think the lab day went well. We're all just getting started and once we get on a role with the class schedule and all, I expect that we'll get more work accomplished during class.
One thing that struck me was that the people who had done the reading but not the homework, seemed equally on the ball with the in-class assignment as the ones who completed the homework problems. In some cases, I felt that those who had only done the reading were more in-tune with the software! I wonder if in focusing on the problems, I may have only peripherally been focused on the actual reading and not gotten some of the key points. It's something I'll have to stay aware of!
Cheers,
Rebecca
great comments; many thanks! i'm glad that y'all seem pretty optimistic about the admittedly unusual way we're using our clasroom time and -- if i'm interpreting correctly -- its utility to you in fostering learning.
the suggestion to address "why R" is a good one. i'll devote a full blog entry to it to share my thinking...
Hi Mike,
I think this is an interesting way to teach the class as it really makes me think about things other than passively listening and scribbling down notes. Although, i do think like we discussed in the last class that if we had some idea of roughly the kind of questions you were going to ask that we could focus more on the text. I did feel when I was reading the text that there was so much infomation there and I was trying to second guess what you might ask. I do think though that you are making us think more about concepts that perhaps other instructors would gloss over, and I can almost imagine being asked some of these questions in a defense. It surprised me how difficult it can be to define a term that you assumed was realtively straight forward. It wasn't until we discussed it in class that it really sunk in what a random sample was and what it wasn't.
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