I told Stefanie that I had recently created a dataset with district-level data of Connecticut student math scores. I had used it to teach students in a public policy class how to use a popular statistical software package, SPSS, and how to read scatterplots. Stefanie jumped on board, since her class on Urban Politics inevitably addressed issues of differing quality of American public schools between urban and suburban areas.

Faculty Role: In this case, once we agreed to go ahead with the project, Stefanie's role was to figure out where the session would fit, in terms of content, into her course calender. She also needed to agree to give up some of her regular class time. After we pinpointed a day that would work, all Stefanie had to do was bring her students to the LITC Blume lab at our agreed-upon time. After the exercise, she was welcome to incorporate any assignments she wished that would encourage students to process what they had learned that day. If she wanted, she could even construct test questions that forced the students to reflect back on the exercise's overall theme.

My role: In turn, my role was to package the data I wanted to use in an SPSS ".sav" file and post the data files on Blackboard, Trinity's course management system. That way, when students entered the lab, they could simply download the datasets I wanted them to examine. I then created a handout that would guide students through the process of using SPSS. I also gave Stefanie a recent newspaper article that discussed the issue of Connecticut's Educational Reference Groups, known as "ERGs," and asked her to have the students read it prior to the lab. Then I simply showed up for class on the appointed day and walked the students through the exercise!