Theresa approached me because she had both a concern and an idea. Her concern was that students in her methods class were having difficulty with the concept of operationalization. Her idea was that one way to get students thinking about this concept was to have them think about different ways that we might define "safety" in the cars that people drive. Theresa came up with this idea after she purchased a new car and then had a friendly debate with a colleague about whether the car she bought was indeed safe.

Faculty Role: Theresa had already done much of the work here by dreaming up the idea. She continued by finding a suitable spot in her schedule for the exercise and by writing an assignment that students would have to complete after the lab session. In the weeks prior to the class, Theresa and I met to flesh out some of the details of what would take place in class.

My Role: My role here was a rather simple one. I needed to find the best online location for car-crash data and anticipate what problems students might have in using the website and interpreting these data. I settled with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).  Trinity's catalog for online data resources. I then showed up for class on our appointed day to help Theresa run the exercise. On that day, Theresa introduced the exercise to the class, while I showed them how to use the website and then circulated around to the various groups as they worked on the assignment. Towards the end of class, I collected what the students had done and transcribed their work in Excel through the computer projection, while Theresa discussed the results.