I mentioned in a post from a few weeks ago that I was working with the JASP statistical software team. Here are just a few notes following up from that productive working meeting.
- Right now, JASP is used primarily by undergraduate and graduate students in psychology and the social sciences
- It could have utility for high school-aged students interested in carrying out statistical data analysis, particularly as it is free, open-source, and low-barrier but high-ceiling in its capabilities; it could make for a very nice complement to other tools that teachers use, including spreadsheets and graphing calculators
- One big potential barrier to its use is that it is, for practical purposes, laptop-computer-based—there isn’t a very user-friendly web-based version, and the Chromebook installation is a chore
- The plan is to add a Teaching Science module to JASP, focused for now on two standards in the Next Generation Science Standards:
- There is good documentation for contributing a module to JASP; see here and here for the “server” and “UI” sides of the module, respectively.
- Big picture, I continue to be inspired to develop tools for high school (science) teachers to do more of what they aim to do with data; working with collaborators around the United States and world is one of the best parts of this job - thanks to my Dutch colleagues E.J. and Johnny for this opportunity!