About the OLC
ICPSR's Online Learning Center (OLC) is the result of discussions with teaching faculty about using data in their classrooms and the challenges such an undertaking can entail, in which several key themes emerged. Instructors wanted the ability to 1) quickly locate relevant data that are easy to work with and work to demonstrate the concept(s) and 2) customize any materials to their own teaching approach and syllabus. To that end, Data-Driven Learning Guides are being created for the express purpose of making ICPSR data more user-friendly for classroom exercises.
Designed for faculty to use for in-class demonstrations or to assign as supplemental activities for giving students greater exposure to concepts, the Data-driven Learning Guides share the following characteristics:
All Guides follow a template that includes a clearly stated learning objective, brief background of the focal concept and chosen dataset, analysis that demonstrates the concept, interpretation guides and further reference material
Topics and concepts chosen represent those that are typically taught in an introductory (100- or 200-level) course in the relevant discipline
Multiple Guides representing various sub-areas of a single topic are useful in lower-division substantive courses in addition to survey courses
Datasets used represent the wide range of data available through ICPSR and are therefore different than other exercise series that focus on a single omnibus survey
Analysis is simplified through the recoding of variables to collapse categories or deal with missing data as appropriate
Bibliographies of related materials are included
For more information or with questions about the Online Learning Center, please contact: OLC@icpsr.umich.edu.
Overall Project Status
The ICPSR OLC is still in the development phases. More topics and guides will continue to be added over time. The site will be ready for a "soft launch" in Winter, 2008, for use in winter and spring term courses. Content and features will continually be updated and added after that time. The purpose of the "soft launch" is to go live and allow instructors to use the site while encouraging their feedback and watching for any potential bugs in the site's use. A more widely-publicized "hard launch" is planned for Summer, 2008.
Project Staff
Linda Detterman
lindamd@umich.edu
Lynette Hoelter
734 615-5653
lhoelter@umich.edu