[Using Sakai] sakai-user Digest, Vol 8, Issue 28

[Marshall Feldman]

Mustansar Mehmood wrote:

> Dear All,
>               I would like  to know if there has been any interest in 
> sakai user/developer community towards having a tool where instructors 
> may want students to
> add data. This data may be exported into spreadsheets for further analysis.
> For instance an  instructor generates a table where students put their 
> data found out through surveys and or experiments. Once many users have 
> added data over a certain period of time then tables in question can be 
> exported in CSV or similar format. Perhaps that data can be fed into  
> some data bank  or into some Master Data Management scheme.
> If there is already a similar project under development please send me a 
> link.
> Looking forward to hear from sakai community for 
> feedback/ideas/thoughts/suggestions/critique.
> Best Regards,
> Mustansar Mehmood
>
>  
>   
This is a very good idea, but I think it needs to go beyond simply using 
numerical data and organizing it spreadsheet fashion. Instead, it should 
include textual, qualitative, and quantitative data, and it should allow 
flexible organization and incremental changes.

As an example of how different kinds of data might be combined, I gave 
my class an assignment to investigate different sources of data on labor 
markets. Each student took a different source and reported back such 
things as the agency supplying the data, the sampling frame, the kinds 
of data available, etc. It would have been very useful to have a dynamic 
tabular framework to which an individual student might add a column 
("Hey, the U.S. Census has data on households, individuals, and 
geographic areas. Shouldn't we have separate columns for listing 
variables pertaining to each level of analysis?").

Additionally, it would be really helpful to be able to display such 
information in a variety of forms (spreadsheet, mind map, zoomed 
presentation slides, etc.), as well as to be able to integrate it 
readily with other tools like the wiki.

    Marsh Feldman
-- 
Dr. Marshall Feldman, PhD
Director of Research and Academic Affairs

Center for Urban Studies and Research
The University of Rhode Island
email: marsh @ uri .edu (remove spaces)


      Contact Information:


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206E Shepard Building
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Providence, RI 02903-1819
tel. (401) 277-5218
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