ADSEI runs evaluation surveys after every workshop. Longitudinal evaluations are coming as we follow up with teachers who have attended our teacher Data Science & STEM workshops in the past.
In the meantime, here are the feedback results from our workshops over the past two years. We run the same questionnaire every time, in order to be able to compare and track progress. All of the numeric questions had a 5 point likert scale response. Not all participants filled out the survey. These responses are from 53 participants over the past two years.
These results are encouragingly positive. Teachers find our workshops deeply valuable, leaving comments like:
“Linda is such a font of knowledge but she is so approachable in how she delivers the content. She was able to communicate with people from so many different backgrounds in a way that made the workshop accessible to all of them but didn’t hamper those with more experience.”
“It was excellent going through the process of linking our own personal priorities into a STEM design activity for designing an app. It made me consider my own practice in terms of how I introduce these sorts of activities to my own students.”
“This was a great opportunity to consider how to use data in a learning area agnostic way, and examine ways of introducing it to students who may have had little exposure to real world data sets in all their messy and sometimes abstruse glory.“
“The best way to approach preparing our next generation for life in 10 years – problem based learning using data correctly to inform our quality of life.”
“Excellent discussion of data science, how to incorporate it into teaching and how to make it relevant“
“A great workshop with loads of practical and engaging examples for how we can use data to create change. Thanks!“
As to the data: 96% of respondents found the workshops useful or extremely useful. 92% would be likely or extremely likely to recommend the workshops to others. 88% felt that the workshops made them more confident or much more confident in teaching Data Science, while 77% felt confident or extremely confident overall – this indicates that there is, unsurprisingly, more work to be done in building teachers’ Data Science skills. A single workshop is not enough to overcome the significant deficit in teacher training that exists.
It’s important to remember that this data is from teachers who have chosen to attend ADSEI workshops – very likely a cohort that is already engaged and possessing some skills in this area, so there’s significant selection bias in the confidence rating.
We include these caveats about the data because it is fundamental to our purpose – we should be asking what is wrong with all of our datasets. What is missing. What is not representative. How is it flawed? And we should normalise reporting data with these caveats – being open about exactly what we are reporting – rather than simply choosing the analyses that present our data in the most flattering light. If you have questions about this data, we encourage you to contact us via email at contact@adsei.org. No-one is above questions, and no analysis is without flaws.
