Each student will be responsible for facilitating the learning of an analytic technique, either individually or as part of a two-person team, depending on course enrollment. The student(s) will:
Based on our course enrollment, I will ask you to sign up for one of the 12 student-facilitated lessons. I will hand out a sign-up sheet to the senior-ranking uniformed military student taking the class and ask him/her to be the POC for the sign-ups between class sessions 1 and 2.
I will evaluate your facilitating based on the following performance measures:
Knowledge: You should become a subject matter expert in the topic you are facilitating. This will require substantial independent learning. However, I highly recommend you select an analytic technique that you plan to apply to your final project and aligns with your thesis problem. This will allow you to refine your knowledge during this class, apply your knowledge to your thesis, and start extracting results.
Organization & Design: Your objective is to develop a tutorial along with in-class material that allows fellow classmates to learn about the analytic technique, when it would be used, and the R packages and code required to execute the technique. Furthermore, the material must provide an example of an integrated use-case along with exercises for the students to demonstrate their knowledge.
Tutorial: Developing online tutorials are a fantastic way to learn topics in more depth, demonstrate your skills, and help build the analytic toolset of other analysts. Your tutorial will be written as a .Rmd file that can be knit to an HTML file and hosted on the AFIT Data Science Lab R Programming Guide website. Your tutorial should introduce the technique, provide the data and R packages to replicate the analysis, and then walk through the mathematical equations along with how to execute, validate, and interpret the analytic technique and results in R. You should also include exercises at the end of the tutorial to allow the reader an opportunity to practice what they’ve learned. This tutorial must be completed and ready to be published online NLT 4 days prior to the class session you will be presenting it. Furthermore, I will need time to review/edit the tutorial so please have a first draft of the tutorial to me NLT 1 week prior to your session. You can see examples of tutorials on the Descriptive and Predictive Analytics pages.
Presentation: You will have 30 minutes to present the analytic technique in class. Since the students will have read through the tutorial this presentation is meant to discuss the technique, how you are using it to address a military problem, and address any questions, concerns, or clarifications from the students. There will be two groups presenting in a single class session so you cannot breach your time limit as the first hour of these sessions will be dedicated to presentation and the last 30 minutes of class will be for the students to perform exercises you provide that allows them to practice executing the analytic technique.
Exercises: For the last 30 minutes of class the students will choose which analytic technique they wish to practice executing. You need to provide a mini case study that asks specific questions which require the students to execute your analytic technique in R in order to answer.
Engagement: Students are engaged with the material and the class. You have made it interesting, whether through encouraging active participation, mandating participation through exercises and/or discussions, and/or motivating the material with both enthusiasm and an application-based focus.
Communication: Your communication of concepts, whether via lecture, demonstration, or even the (oral or written) posing of discussion questions, should be clear and precise. By “precise”, I mean accurate within the lexicon of R programming and the analytic technique being discussed. This includes your use of notation, code, and the like.
Students facilitating a lesson need to meet with me at least a week prior to your lesson to propose how you plan to conduct it so that I can help you refine and/or improve it. What are my expectations when we meet at least a week prior to the lesson? You should have already delved into the material at a depth greater than you expect of the other students, created a draft tutorial, and developed a plan for how you want to facilitate the lesson. The more you have done, the more valuable any refinement is when we meet, and the better your lesson will likely go.
After your lesson, I will ask you to conduct a self-assessment using the coarse rubric shown below. I will complete one, too, but it’s important to develop your self-awareness in order to improve without external directives in future assignments.
| Measure | Highly Effective: coded as 3 |
Effective: coded as 2 |
Improvement Necessary: coded as 1 |
Does Not Meet Standards: coded as 0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Knowledge | Expert in the subject area. | Knows the subject matter well. | Is familiar with the subject matter. | Has little familiarity with the subject matter. |
| Organization & Design | Has clearly defined approach and a well-orchestrated design of the tutorial and class for students to learn the technique. | Has defined approach and a sound design of the tutorial and class for students to learn the technique. | Has poorly defined approach and design of the tutorial and class for students to learn the technique. | Has poorly defined approach and a haphazard design of the class that does not provide a clear path for students to learn the technique. |
| Tutorial | Tutorial is reproducible and follows a clearly defined outline. Code is efficient and properly styled. Graphs and tables are fine tuned for desired purpose. Adequate mathematical notation is provided to clarify how the analytic technique is manipulating the data. Explanation of the technique and interpretation of the outputs are clear and concise. | Tutorial is reproducible and follows a defined outline. Code is adquate and properly styled. Graphs and tables are tuned for desired purpose. Mathematical notation is provided to clarify how the analytic technique is manipulating the data. Explanation of the technique and interpretation of the outputs are provided. | Tutorial is reproducible and but outline is ill-defined. Code is adquate but not properly styled. Graphs and tables are well selected but could be better tuned and formatted. Mathematical notation is provided but does not clarify how the analytic technique is manipulating the data. Explanation of the technique and interpretation of the outputs are poor. | Tutorial is not reproducible and outline is ill-defined. Code is inadquate and poorly styled. Graphs and tables are not well selected and have formatting errors. Mathematical notation is insufficiently linked to the analytic technique. Explanation of the technique and interpretation of the outputs are poor and misleads the learner. |
| Presentation | Clearly introduces the analytic technique and how it is applicable to military and industry problem. Provides a cogent recap of the tutorial. Answers all student follow-up questions. Finishes prior to time limit. | Sufficiently introduces the analytic technique and how it is applicable to military and/or industry problem. Provides a generally cogent recap of the tutorial. Answers most student follow-up questions. Finishes on time or late. | Introduces the analytic technique and relates to military or industry problem. Recap of the tutorial requires some clarification. Has a hard time answering student follow-up questions. Finishes on time. | Introduces the analytic technique but does not adequately relate its use to a military or industry problem. Recap of the tutorial is not clear and requires clarification. Insufficiently answers student follow-up questions. Finishes on late. |
| Exercises | Clearly defined and outlined exercises that provide a structured approach to practicing the analytic technique. Not only provides the exercises but also provide solutions. | Sufficiently outlined exercises that provide a structured approach to practicing the analytic technique. Not only provides the exercises but also provide solutions. | Exercises require corrections and could be better structured. Solutions are insufficiently linked to the exercises. | Exercises require significant corrections and even lead the learner astray. Solutions are not provided. |
| Engagement | All students are actively engaged with the material. | Most students are engaged with the material. | Selected students are engaged with the material. | Students are not engaged with the material. |
| Communication | Communication is clear, concise, cogent, and correct. | Communication is generally clear, concise, cogent, and correct. | Communication requires some corrections and/or amendments to correct errors. | Communication is not clear and misconveys important aspects of the material. |
Total possible points: 21