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Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This exploratory study investigated the teaching practices of social science instructors at the University of New Hampshire who engage with undergraduate students using quantitative data in the classroom. The participants interviewed teach both general and discipline-specific data concepts as academic, work, and life skills. Primary challenges discussed by the participants that students face in engaging with these topics are understanding math and statistical concepts, learning new software and computing skills, limited prior exposure to data, and lack of retention of content from earlier courses. Participants addressed challenges in several ways in order to lower barriers to learning, including finding, vetting, and cleaning data for their students to use. Participants could use additional support and new strategies to alleviate student challenges; specific recommendations are discussed in the report. This study is connected to a suite of parallel studies being developed locally at other higher education institutions and coordinated by Ithaka S+R.

Department

University Library Scholarship

Publication Date

10-1-2021

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://dx.doi.org/10.34051/p/2021.39

Document Type

Report

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