The problem
Quantitative reasoning (the basis of evidence-based decision-making) is a skill that benefits every person. Scientist educators strive to develop this in their students. "Number sense" is notoriously difficult to develop, perhaps in part because of student math anxiety and a fixed mindset ("math is hard," "I'm not mathematically inclined," etc.).
So, I've been working to incorporate mathematical analysis exercises in my classes. The way I see it, the best way to do this is to use spreadsheets. They're relatively easy to use (compared to command-line programs like R or GUI-ish Mathematica or SPSS), free (e.g. Google Sheets, Apple's Numbers) or nearly free to students (e.g. Microsoft Excel).
I grew up using Excel, and can't imagine life without it. Heck, I use it to understand how quickly my Thanksgiving turkeys cook so that, given the mass of this year's turkey, I can predict when to put the stuffing and roast potatoes in the oven and have everything come out perfectly done at the same time:
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| Evidence of the extent of my nerd cred. |
Of course, I had to learn to use Excel somewhere. When I entered college, I had a pretty good grasp. As I recall, I knew how to enter calculations, fill-down calculations, format cells, and so forth. I don't recall where I picked this up…probably from a high school science class. But, of course, not everybody gets this exposure in high school. In college, my fantastic honors general chemistry lab instructor, a well-known and recognized (and non-tenure-track) instructor, invested huge amounts of time teaching us analytical skills using Excel (significant figures, error propagation; the whole nine yards). And then I took an "Advanced Excel" class offered by the business school.
And so, about twenty years on, it has been a shock to me, when I teach upper-division biology, that students don't already inherently know how to use a spreadsheet. That's my myopia.
What to do about it?
Apple's Clips app. This semester, I will intentionally involve students, during class, in more spreadsheet-based data analysis than I have undertaken before. And I need to scaffold instruction in using spreadsheets along with their use.Having just been through (very little, but intense) training and exploration in using Clips at the Apple Distinguished Educator academy, I thought, "Here is a great tool for making a series of microlectures on using Google Sheets." I started with the basics: the structure of a spreadsheet, the types of information spreadsheets can contain, and how to perform simple calculations.
I plan to follow this up with additional Clips, to produce a video microlecture series. Sure, these tutorials exist elsewhere - and they are probably more professionally done. But, I think (and students tell me) that there is tremendous value in their teacher having made the videos - that makes them tailored to the particular scenarios and case studies employed in the specific class. It also indicates our dedication to the class and to the education of the students.
Basic Clips Workflow and Best Practices
Here's a brief overview of how I made the above 2:30 Clip.Record a screencast of using Google Sheets. I plugged my iPad into my MacBook using the charging cable, and used Quicktime Player (File: New Movie Recording, and then choose your iPad, or even iPhone, as the video source) to record me (without audio) as I navigated my iPad to launch Google Sheets and then perform several tasks in Sheets. I saved the video on my laptop and imported it into my Photos reel so that it would be available on my mobile devices.
The next step was voiceover. I used Apple's Clips app: this plays the video as it imports into Clips. While importing (in real time), I used Clips to record a voiceover annotation of what I was doing through the entire video. I recorded the voiceovers in sections to produce a series of short "clips" that comprise the entire video above. Here I can highlight one of Clips' key features: live captioning. Clips uses the Siri voice recognition engine to process your voice as you speak and translate it into captions: on the fly! Of course, no voice recognition is perfect, so I use Clips' built-in transcript editing tool to make small changes (usually the addition of punctuation marks) to perfect my captions.
Having made this series of short, individual video clips, I interspersed (again, using Clips) the still, text frames (called "Posters") in between each clip. I use these to summarize information from the previous video and/or to introducing upcoming information.
Then, onto the various clips (videos and posters), I added some animated graphics (emojis, arrowheads, etc.) to emphasize particular parts of each video component.
Finally, I added a background soundtrack (just for fun). I exported the movie (to my camera roll, where I exported it to my laptop as a .mov file) and then uploaded it to YouTube to share with the world (i.e. my class).
At the end of the clip (as is my wont during classes), I added an "extension" piece, so that students who cruise through the video and quickly grasp the content have a new exercise to work on before our next class meeting.
