Inquiry into Action, Spring 2011

This Thursday, 2/24, we will begin in seminar, divide into 5 subgroups, then rotate through five different research method discussions.  The day will end back in your seminar.  Below are the rotation times, please be present for all discussions, your attendance will be noted.

9:30-9:45 – Seminar time
9:45-10:30 – Rotation 1  (Grp 1 starts in room A, 2 in B, 3 in C, 4 in D and 5 in E)
10:30-10:35 – Break
10:35-11:20 – Rotation 2 (Grp 1 rotates to room B, 2 to C, 3 to D, 4 to E, 5 to A.)
11:20-11:25 – Break
11:25-12:10 – Rotation 3 (continue rotation process)
12:10-1:10 – Lunch break
1:10-1:55 – Rotation 4 (continue rotation process)
1:55-2:00 – Break
2:00-2:45 – Rotation 5 (continue rotation process)
2:45-2:50 – Break
2:50-3:30 – End in Home Seminar

See you tomorrow.

As promised, here is  Thursday’s presentation on information management and the collaborative building of research capital .  Do look through them carefully, as we had to move very briskly through the presentation and practice.  If you didn’t have your computer with you on Thursday, or you are encountering any problems with delicious, do let you seminar leaders know.  Enjoy the rest of the week-end!

Library searches, e-journals, and Google Scholar

Unfortunately, the readings for next week to prepare us for our guest speaker are too large to post here.  Please visit the wiki for links to them.

http://nclc203wagner.pbworks.com/w/page/34510898/Suggested-Resources

– Wendy

From what we currently know, Thursday should be sunny!  We look forward to meeting you in our seminars that day.

Given the schedule change, we were unable to get into the JC Cinema (or any other large space) on Thursday, so instead we are beginning in our seminar rooms.

Please go directly to the Johnson Center 3rd floor atrium and we will direct you to your seminar room.  Here is where each of you will go:

001- Assembly Room A

002 – Room B

003 – Room C

005 – Room D

006 – Room E

007 – Room F

Those of you in Prof. Freels seminar (006) should know that Prof. Freels and his wife just had a baby boy (born yesterday!).  If he is unable to be with us on Thursday, we will divide his seminar among the other five classes for this Thursday and next. We’ll have more directions about this plan on Thursday morning.  So, come to the atrium and we’ll let you know where to go.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t yet read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, or read the first part of Gray’s text – this is the time to do so.

See you soon,

The 203 Team

One of our most important assignments this semester is the Community Events Observation assignment, through which you will examine how to work within a community to conduct research and generate positive change.  Here’s one way in which you can start this work for NCLC 203 on Monday, 31 January.

The University sponsors an annual Visions Series of lectures  by faculty on key social, political, economic, cultural and personal issues.  On Monday, 31 January, Associate Professor Rebecca Goldin  will talk about the uses and misuses of statistics in the media. These lectures are usually quite lively, with good Q & A sessions, and often followed by a reception with the speaker.

Although we would not normally recommend a formal lecture as a community event, this lecture is so relevant to our focus on Inquiry into Action, especially the segment on how we draw conclusions from data, we should be delighted to count this lecture as one (out of a total of 4) of your community event observations for this semester.  You will find detailed instructions on the concepts you should be considering before and during any community event in the guidelines for the assignment.  In the meantime, read the outline of the lecture below, and remember that the lecture takes place in the Center for the Arts.

Should You Believe It? Use and Misuse of Statistics in the Media

Rebecca Goldin
Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 7 p.m.

News accounts are filled with numbers and implicit advice. How much coffee is too much? Is the internet making us smarter or dumber? Do vitamins improve our health or harm us? In contexts as diverse as criminal courts, opinion surveys, and our personal health, statistics are playing a larger and larger role. Despite our need for clear rendering of numerical information, many media accounts using statistics are misleading.

Eye-catching headlines typically promote exaggerated benefits of medical treatment, exaggerated risks of everyday living, and tragic or comic opinions of survey respondents. We will use recent news accounts, both humorous and serious, to illustrate this process and to suggest how to become savvy news consumers. Numbers can be powerful when we move past politics and morality to clarify what science actually tells us, what it does not, and what it cannot.

We’re sorry that we were unable to meet with you today and look forward to finally getting started next Thursday. Meanwhile, be sure to look ahead with readings and look over the various assignments posted. This will help you a lot in planning for the semester.

One of the assignments you have is to attend four community events – we’re thinking meetings, hearings, possible lectures, etc. Look at what’s happening around Mason and around Northern Virginia to get an idea of what to attend.

Be sure to  check in at this site and we’ll keep you updated on various activities.

Enjoy the snow!

The 203 team

We hope you are enjoying this weather and staying somewhere warm. We haven’t heard yet about tomorrow and class time, but once we do, it will be posted here.  Meanwhile, please read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and look over the first two chapters of the Gray text.  We’ll adapt our first day activities to the time we have.

Assuming we start at our regular time, please arrive at the Johnson Center Cinema by 9:30 am.

See you tomorrow.

Prof. Muir

Happy New Year!

You will find  The Allegory of the Cave, for discussion on the first day of our learning community, at the History Guide website.  Please print the reading and bring it to class: if you copy the text and paste it into a word-processing document, you can adjust the type size to fit more text onto each page, and thus save paper.  Looking forward to our semester together…

Just a quick note from your faculty (check the faulty page to the right) to welcome you to NCLC 203.   We have been working hard over the fall to create as compelling a learning community as we can, and we’re looking forward very much indeed to working with everyone in the Spring.

In the meantime, our books for NCLC 203: Spring 2011 will be:

The Research Imagination: An Introduction to Qualitative and Quantitative Methods [Paperback]
Paul S. Gray, John B. Williamson , David A. Karp & John R. Dalphin
Cambridge University Press, 2007

A Writer’s Reference (Seventh Edition)
Diane Hacker & Nancy Sommers
Bedford/St. Martins, 2010

If you have any questions about the learning community, please do contact our team leader, Dr. Janette Muir, for information or guidance.  You will be able to locate her e-mail address on the George Mason University People Finder screen or via the Faculty page on this site.