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 OLC is under continual development. More topics and guides will be added over time. Future phases will include a mechanism for faculty to submit their own Data-Driven Learning Guides, and tools to aid faculty with assessing student learning related to OLC use.
Project Staff
Linda Detterman
lindamd@umich.edu
Lynette Hoelter
734 615-5653
lhoelter@umich.edu
Meet the DDLG Developers
