The Virtual Internet Accessible Workshop

The most innovative aspect of the SSDAN project is the implementation of a virtual workshop. This means that faculty from any undergraduate program can participate in the conferencing, data access, and exercise creation activities of this project by communicating with our core faculty and staff over the Internet, or using e-mail. Our "virtual" workshop revolves around two components: (1) an e-mail discussion group for active participants; and (2) a data analysis exercise "bank" that contains text and datasets for individual class exercises which can be retrieved by the instructor over the Internet or via e-mail.

To use our materials, it is not necessary that entire universities, classrooms, or student audiences have Internet access, but rather that the instructor has access, somewhere on campus, to an individual Internet connection, or e-mail account. Hence, a large body of faculty participants in this network can use this system to retrieve data exercises for use in their classes (from the "bank").

All instructors who wish the Michigan staff to work with them in producing exercises must agree to "try them out" in their own classes and provide feedback to us regarding their effectiveness. This feedback will be included in the notes that are attached to the data exercises, deposited in the general bank. These exercises, in addition to those created by our in-person workshop members, should result in over 300 data exercises at the conclusion of the project.