Professor David Williamson Shaffer - Quantitative Ethnography
From Dragan Gasevic
views
comments
From Dragan Gasevic
The ability to teach and assess the development of complex thinking skills is crucial for 21st century educational research. In the age of educational games and the Big Data they generate, we have more information than ever about what students are doing and how they are thinking. But the sheer volume of data available can overwhelm traditional qualitative and quantitative research methods.
Quantitative Ethnography is a set of research methods that weave the study of culture together with statistical tools to understand learning—a way to go beyond looking for arbitrary patterns in mountains of data that games and simulations generate, and begin telling textured stories at scale.
This talk provides an overview of the science of Quantitative Ethnography, and a preview of two key tools that researchers can use to assess complex thinking in games and simulations. The first tool is Epistemic Network Analysis, a network modeling technique for modeling learning in Big Datasets. The second is nCoder, which supports the development and validation of codes—both automated codes and inter-rater reliability in traditional hand coding procedures.
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336, VAT Registration Number GB 592 9507 00, and is acknowledged by the UK authorities as a “Recognised body” which has been granted degree awarding powers.
Any views expressed within media held on this service are those of the contributors, should not be taken as approved or endorsed by the University, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University in respect of any particular issue.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright © The University of Edinburgh 2021 and may only be used in accordance with the terms of the licence.