The EDDIE Way

The ideas presented in this document complement the Project EDDIE Rubric, and together with the project's goals and key areas of learning, constitute the EDDIE Way.

EDDIE PD Leaders strive to:

• Build and support use of EDDIE aligned and inspired teaching by making use of EDDIE modules and vignettes and developing more EDDIE-style modules
• Continue to establish a community or network that enables ongoing adoption
• Adhere to the EDDIE principles described below
   

EDDIE users strive to:

• Develop comfort with student-driven learning
• Design courses for a vibrant inquiry environment, bringing enthusiasm and encouraging exploration of the unexpected
• Incorporate data interpretation, critical reasoning, and scientific argumentation into learning activities
• Scaffold modules to addresses students' diverse interests, experiences, and quantitative experiences

EDDIE Approach to Engagement

1. Pedagogical Approach and Teaching Actions in the Classroom

(See specific details in the Project EDDIE Rubric).

• Show enthusiasm for the process and the exploration
• Encourage student-student interactions by fully embracing the pedagogy of engagement through conversations among both students and instructors
• Scaffold student-driven inquiry that leads students from prescriptive inquiry through guided and eventually to open inquiry as they progress through the ABC-structured module.
• Explore and embrace the unexpected, which promotes discussion of scientific principles, new research questions, and analysis procedures.
• Maximize instances when research outcomes are not known ahead of time, which provides opportunity to demonstrate authentic scientific inquiry to students. 
• Encourage students to share unexpected findings and observations and reward them for being willing to discuss what they do not understand; verbal acknowledgement and appreciation is better than point-driven rewards. 
• Share unexpected observations with the whole class to discuss, and acknowledge the student's competence in noticing them and curiosity for exploring them. 
• Create a classroom in which students are actively engaging in scientific practices in the classroom, driven by curiosity and exploration; activities are the on-ramp to engage students to go further in their increasingly independent exploration and inquiry.
• Proceed slowly as students need time to orient to the data, the graphs, practical details of analysis, etc. 
• Encourage students to get help from each other before asking you and/or the TA for help. 
• Remember to debrief at the end so that nobody leaves with misinterpretations, gaps in understanding, or lingering questions that can be answered at the moment.

2. Characteristics of the Modules

Modules progress through at least three parts, known as the ABC structure, which supports students' progression from prescriptive inquiry to guided inquiry to open inquiry all within one module. The repetition of the data analysis methods allows progressively opening inquiry, through which students can devote more effort to the inquiry while practicing an analysis method. The ABC structure is designed to:

• Explore a relevant scientific question. The modules are anchored with an overarching relevant scientific question in an authentic context.
• Support students towards greater independence from the instructor. Scaffolding to assist in data analysis methods is gradually removed as students progress through the ABC structure and become progressively more independent. By the last part of the activity, students are choosing how to explore the research question (e.g., about data subset/analysis/location to acquire data).
• Provide opportunities to students to explore and make increasingly sophisticated choices about data and analyses to address a scientific question or problem. The module asks students to explore the data so they can decide and explain which analyses from a subset that have been scaffolded earlier in the module are appropriate.
• Develop sophistication in communicating reasoning and results. Beginning with simpler communication strategies (e.g., explaining to a neighbor or formulation of a figure caption), students have the opportunity to explain and communicate their reasoning and results more thoroughly.

The data used should be:

• Authentic 
• Credible
• Relevant to the research questions addressed in the module
• Publically accessible
• Sufficiently large to compel development of data management skills
   

The quantitative reasoning aspects of the materials are designed to:

• Engage students in using tools to perform a visualization and analysis and generate a statistical output
• Compel students to make a claim, support it with evidence, and explain the coordination between the two (i.e., "claim-evidence-reasoning" characterization of scientific argumentation)
• Promote conceptual development within the disciplinary context of the module

All modules have:

• Clearly stated learning objectives
• All instructional materials needed to complete the module and achieve the learning objectives, so that the instructor would not need to supplement with other resources These could include introductory material (e.g. instructional slides), student handouts/guides, and instructor handouts/guides
• A pre-packaged version of the dataset, allowing for offline use of the module, if needed
• Properly cited materials

3. Practicalities and Logistics of Implementation

• Make sure one has the equipment, software, and materials needed to complete the activity and install software, as necessary. Also have internet access, if needed.
• Learn the software (RStudio, RStudio Cloud, Excel); this applies to both the instructor and students.
• Circulate the room as students work through the materials and catch difficulties and sticking points along the way.
• Consider having teaching assistants help, if available. Students who finish early may be able to act as TAs. 
• For online teaching, setting up a breakout room designated for help with the software can be useful. 
• For online teaching, encourage students to share their screens when asking for help.
• For coding software, having pre-written code is helpful. For more advanced students, have them alter the code.
• When using R, have students check the packages are installed before they start running the code. This is the most common issue, along with syntax.
• Project EDDIE modules provide all materials needed to run the activity (PowerPoint, Student handout, Instructor guide, data set(s). Explore these ahead of time, and if possible, work through at least part of the activity to uncover potential sticking points and logistical challenges. Instructors can also identify and make connections to other activities or material in the course and develop extension activities.
• Determine if students are working on their computers or if you will engage with the module in a computer lab.
• Remind students to bring laptops, fully charged, and provide outlets, if possible, if they are working on their own computers.
• Use the whiteboard to write information regarding the software, such as shortcuts if using Excel.
• Give yourself time to set up the activity within your course management system (CMS), if you are delivering the module online. Make use of "prerequisite" settings in CMS systems to make sure that parts of the module open in the order in which students should engage them.
• For online employment of a module you need to work through how to provide students with checkpoints to make sure they are on the right track with the assignment since they would not have the in-class environment to catch mistakes:
  • Upload recordings or explanations about how students can deal with technical roadblocks as they work through the assignment.
  • Include outside links that could help the student either for data or for technical feedback.
  • Space out due dates for the activity if the students will be doing the work remotely. 
  • Break down the module into parts so that instructors can provide corrections to the students' approach to the assignment.
  • Provide clear videos of particularly tricky technical steps in Excel or  R (or other platforms).