Managing information & data handling and processing within the health and science sector

Managing information and handing/processing data is a key requirement for almost every science-related occupation. Developing skills of data analysis and interpretation is crucial in developing a student’s critical thinking ability, problem solving skills and ability to provide evidence-based arguments. It takes time to build these skills and abilities; ideally there should be plenty of opportunities embedded within schemes of learning to constantly revisit and practice the techniques involved, across a range of scenarios, until the students feel confident in their abilities.

There are many examples of data sources that can be used in class or as part of homework or extension and enrichment activities. The resources listed here provide a variety of real world data sets that can be downloaded and then analysed using familiar software packages such as excel. Also listed are some online data manipulation and processing platforms which create eye-catching graphics – these can be used to spark debate and discussion or provide a starter activity on a given theme or topic. Finally, there are various guides that provide worked examples and reference sources to help students develop their confidence with managing and handling data.

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Data Nuggets are free classroom activities, co-designed by scientists and teachers, designed to bring contemporary research and authentic data into the classroom. The resources include a connection to the scientist behind the data and the true story of their research. Each activity gives students practice working with “messy data” and interpreting quantitative information. Students are guided through the entire process of science, including identifying hypotheses and predictions, visualizing and interpreting data, making evidence based claims, and asking their own questions for future research. The activities and resources are ideal for students to practice skills of data analysis with examples that come directly from real research.

CODAP (Common Online Data Analysis Platform) is an open-source data analysis platform that can be used by students. It can be used across a wide range of topics to help students summarize, visualize, and interpret data, advancing their skills to use data as evidence to support a claim. Students can load their own data into the data analysis tool to create their own datasets, share visualizations, identify trends, patterns and form conclusions. The site includes sample datasets and has specific guidance for educators in using the platform

Kaggle is a website that provides free access to various data sets that can be downloaded and analysed. The number and type of datasets are huge and can be searched by topic of interest – a description and introduction to the dataset is provided and each of the column fields is explained. The data can be downloaded in csv file format and then analysed or alternatively the website itself displays rudimentary graphs. The datasets are useful for teaching students to identify trends, patterns and correlations in data and also provide supporting evidence for arguments. The data would also be useful in providing a real world source for the practice of statistical tests.

This website from Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching provides datasets on world athletics records, Olympic games, world population distribution, census results and populations of countries. As with other datasets, the data can be used to introduce students to key skills of analysis and interpretation. For example analysis of world record trends can provide a useful exercise in terms of extrapolation of trends and predictions.

From HHMI Biointeractive, this activity guides the analysis of published scientific data from a study that investigated demographic patterns in Ebola outbreaks from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The resource includes a teacher guide and relevant worksheets that examine graphical data of ebola cases by age group of the population; also included are discussion prompts that can be used to formatively assess understanding.

The UK Data Service provides information and links to a collection of teaching resources, which includes workbooks for learning quantitative methods and statistical software, teaching materials using major archived qualitative studies and datasets designed for teaching and learning. To access the majority of datasets, free registration is required by both teacher and students; the available datasets are listed by substantive topic titles with summaries of sample size, number of variables and potential uses.

The WHO provides a global database on child growth and malnutrition; this can be searched by country, surveys, sex or type of residence. Data can be downloaded in both short and expanded formats which can provide the basis of an analysis activity or exercise with students.

Public Health England (PHE) provides many high quality data and analysis tools and resources for public health professionals. The PHE data and knowledge gateway provides direct access to these resources. Professionally, they are used to help government and health service professionals make decisions and plans to improve people’s health and reduce inequalities. For teaching purposes, they would be ideal for students to practice their analytical skills and form evidence-based conclusions. This could then lead on to debate or discussion on what governmental policy should be and what mitigations need to be put in place.

The Met Office website provides numerous open-access datasets that show historical data that covers various different parameters (e.g. temperature, rainfall, windspeed, etc) for different geographical regions. The website allows the selection of the parameters of interest and the corresponding data of interest can then be downloaded and analysed. Data for long running historic weather stations can also be accessed HERE.

The Natural History Museum provides a huge amount of open source data that it collates about the natural world. These can be accessed by the data portal within the website and includes research datasets produced by museum scientists as well as digitised objects in the museum collection.

This website provides a fantastic data imaging tool where various datasets can be compared and displayed graphically to illustrate world trends (e.g. global childhood deaths due to diarrhoea). This could be used to introduce a particular topic and students could be asked to predict the trends or patterns that they would expect to see before the true graph is displayed. This could then lead on to more in depth discussion and explanations for the trends. The website also includes an interactive list of questions on the theme of “You are probably wrong”, which again, can be used to stimulate discussion and debate.

This website provides lots of different imaginative ways in which data can be represented so it is easily understood. Data can be searched for by topic of interest and the underlying data can be accessed and downloaded from their library of spreadsheets. An interesting activity might be for students to analyse a particular data set, display the data and present their conclusions before being shown the version presented on the website – a comparison can then be made and students asked to reflect on whether their method of representation and conclusions is in agreement.

The WHO data platform provides a number of interactive graphic illustrations and data sets that relate to health. For example, the mortality database can be explored by country and year (1980-2016), with a data dashboard display providing quick and immediate visualisation of key statistics. Dashboards displays can also be quickly and easily switched (e.g. to show a different country or year), allowing comparisons to be made. It would be a useful exercise to present students with two such dashboard displays and challenge then to identify the key changes and progress (or lack of it) that has been made between different time periods and/or geographical locations.

Compound Interest is a site that aims to take a closer look at the chemical compounds we come across on a day-to-day basis, explaining them with easy-to-understand graphics. The site includes a directory where specific topic areas within chemistry can be searched and the graphics (covering a single A4 page) can be downloaded. Topics covered include those that relate directly to level 3 curricula and also many that do not – but would nevertheless be very interesting to show the applications of chemistry in industry and academia. The graphics are also provided with written commentary on the site, which is useful for more detailed background reading. Students could be asked to find a graphic that particularly interests them and provide a brief presentation or the graphics could be used to produce an engaging wall display in the laboratory, with a different one being highlighted and discussed every week.

This webpage from HHMI provides a range of tutorials and resources on the theme of data handling and statistics. The tutorials particularly focus on the use of excel as a platform to perform data analysis and provide real world data to practice with. For example, there are exercises that cover the calculation of t-tests using excel spreadsheet functions and then application of the techniques to Galapagos island finches beak size, along with similar exercises involving histograms, standard error and column graphs.

This is a guide to data analysis in post 16 biology and is published by SSERC. Although aimed at biology, the core statistical techniques discussed here would be equally valid in other investigations involving chemistry or physics. The resource would make a useful reference guide for all students (and teachers) and covers key definitions whilst providing succinct explanations for statistical terms.

In this activity from HHMI Biointeractive, students evaluate a science news article to determine whether it is a trustworthy source of information. This is a good activity for students to practise their reading comprehension and evaluation skills – two versions of the student worksheet are available, one which focuses on evaluating a science news article and another extended version which uses criteria for evaluating sources in more detail.

In this resource, the students are asked to look at various aspects of data security. In part this covers cyber security but it also looks at data integrity and ensuring that users data does not become corrupt through various means. There are a variety of activities provided, and all of the necessary resources are included. There are also brief discussions relating to exam technique and how to ensure that the maximum possible marks are achieved for a given question.

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Quality AssuredCategory:Mathematics

A suite of over 10 separate resources from the STEM Learning library that focus on both data presentation and interpretation. The resources vary from topics such as histogram construction and descriptive statistics to using population data and identifying correlations. Although originally aimed at AS level Mathematics, the resources would be equally useful in support of T Level Science