Date
Location
This workshop is limited to instructors and staff whose institutions are members of the UK Reproducibility Network. It will be delivered in-person over the course of two days (June 5-6, 2024).
This workshop will introduce attendees to Project TIER’s principles and practices of integrating reproducible methods into teaching and research.
Attendees should have some experience teaching courses involving applied data analysis and/or supervising data-based student research projects, as well as plans to teach such a course again in the near future.
During the workshop, attendees will create an output (such as a lab exercise or instructions for a reproducible research project) based on principles they learn in the workshop that they can use in their own teaching in the upcoming academic year.
The program of the workshop includes:
- Workflows for reproducible research. The TIER Protocol is based on a research style that has been and remains prevalent in the social sciences, but introduces standards of documentation that ensure transparency and reproducibility. This approach emphasizes the importance of constructing replication documentation incrementally throughout all phases of a research project, and preserving scripts containing commands that execute every step of data processing and analysis underlying the results of a study.
- Teaching strategies. Discussion of strategies for teaching students to conduct research using these reproducible research methods, and of how these strategies can be adapted to serve in diverse environments--differing, for example, in class size, preparedness of students, access to data and computing resources, and the amount of time available to devote to reproducibility.
- File-sharing platforms. Demonstrations of one or more file-sharing platforms (e.g., Dropbox, OSF, GitHub, etc.), and of how they can be used to radically transform the nature of collaboration among students working on projects together as well as communication between instructors and students.
- Pedagogical benefits. Discussion of the benefits of teaching reproducible research methods. These benefits have to do both with developing the professional skills of the next generation of researchers, and with reinforcing fundamental principles of inquiry, argument, and integrity that are essential elements in the education of all students, regardless of their later career paths.
Software
All the concepts and principles we will present during the workshop are software-neutral: they can be implemented with R, Stata, SPSS, SAS, or any other scriptable statistical software.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Despite this neutrality with respect to which particular software is used, the use of some programmable statistical package is essential. The methods presented at the workshop are not applicable in settings in which students work with their data interactively in Excel or other spreadsheets, or in which students rely on the drop-down menus available in some programs.
Instructors whose students use spreadsheets or drop-down menus, but who wish to wean them from those tools and teach them to work with editable scripts instead, are welcome at the workshop and may find much of it valuable. The workshop does not have much to offer for situations in which switching from spreadsheets and drop-down menus to editable scripts is not feasible.
Workshop organizers
The organizers and instructors for the workshop are:
Richard Ball Professor of Economics, Haverford College; and Project TIER co-director
Norm Medeiros, Associate Librarian, Haverford College; and Project TIER co-director
About Project TIER Faculty Development Workshops
Project TIER's Faculty Development Workshops are designed for college and university educators who are interested in integrating principles of transparency and reproducibility into quantitative methods courses and research training.
The workshops introduce participants to protocols for conducting and documenting empirical research that ensure the reproducibility of all computational results, and then present a`range of pedagogical strategies and curricular resources for teaching these methods to students in a variety of educational settings.
The objective is to help instructors develop plans for teaching reproducible research practices that will be feasible and effective in their particular contexts, so that they are fully prepared to implement the methods presented at the workshops when they return to their home institutions.
Participants are also introduced to opportunities to collaborate with Project TIER in the development and dissemination of curricular resources for practicing and teaching transparent research methods. The ultimate goal is to foster the development of a community of educators committed to the idea that transparency and reproducibility should be integrated into all levels of research training for students in quantitative fields.
Who can benefit from attending a workshop?
- Faculty who teach courses involving statistics and data analysis, and/or supervise student research.
- Staff of libraries, interdisciplinary centers for research and education, or IT departments with responsibility for training or support of student research.
- Graduate students and post-docs who currently serve as instructors or TAs, or anticipate doing so in the future.
- Any other individuals in a position to use the methods presented at the workshops in some way that promotes transparent and reproducible methods in the research training of students in quantitative fields.
Individuals who teach or advise quantitative research methods are welcome, regardless of their disciplines. Most participants in past workshops have been social scientists, but the number of individuals from mathematics, statistics, and the natural sciences has been growing. Further increases in the diversity of the disciplines represented at the workshops would be welcome.
Commitment to inclusion and diversity
Project TIER is committed to serving members of underrepresented minorities, women, and low-income and first-generation college students.
We seek to collaborate with colleagues whose talents and perspectives reflect diverse backgrounds and life experiences, and value the distinctive perspectives they bring to Project TIER.
Individuals belonging to underrepresented groups, and/or whose teaching and advising will reach large numbers of under-served students, are especially encouraged to apply.