Taylor, M., & Mathieson, D., & House, L., & North, C. (2022, August), Andromeda in the Classroom: Collaborative Data Analysis for 8th Grade Engineering Design  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41168

\bibitem{asee_peer_41168}
  Taylor, M., \& Mathieson, D., \& House, L., \& North, C. (2022, August), \emph{Andromeda in the Classroom: Collaborative Data Analysis for 8th Grade Engineering Design}
  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.
  10.18260/1-2--41168

Mia Taylor, Danny Mathieson, Leanna House, and Chris North.  "Andromeda in the Classroom: Collaborative Data Analysis for 8th Grade Engineering Design".  2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August.  ASEE Conferences, 2022.  https://peer.asee.org/41168 Internet.  22 Dec, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_41168}
  Mia Taylor, Danny Mathieson, Leanna House, and Chris North.
  "Andromeda in the Classroom: Collaborative Data Analysis for 8th Grade Engineering Design".
  \emph{2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2022.
  https://peer.asee.org/41168 Internet.  22 Dec, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_41168
author = "Mia Taylor, Danny Mathieson, Leanna House, and Chris North"
title = "Andromeda in the Classroom: Collaborative Data Analysis for 8th Grade Engineering Design"
booktitle = "2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2022"
month = "August"
address = "Minneapolis, MN"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/41168}
number = {10.18260/1-2--41168}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Collaborative data analysis enables students to explore and analyze multi-dimensional data together. This case study shows how collaborative data analysis can be successfully integrated into teaching the engineering design process using novel software called Andromeda. 
     
     Andromeda is an interactive tool that seeks to make analysis of multi-dimensional data accessible for novices. Multi-dimensional data is often difficult for people to understand because it relates multiple variables, for example all the many factors that might make a racecar design faster or slower. Andromeda visualizes the data in a two-dimensional plot, such that data points (e.g. racecar designs) that are considered similar in the multi-dimensional sense are plotted closer to each other. Analysts can interactively explore relationships and trade-offs in the data by dragging data points and sliders. Now, we show that Andromeda has collaborative utility in a classroom setting and as a public, educational resource for teachers and students.
    
     This case study performs an observational, qualitative analysis on the collaborative use of Andromeda in an 8th grade technology education class. Students were given two engineering projects through \whitebox{}: Survival Shelter 2.0 and Dragster 2.0. \whitebox{} is a web-based STEM education software that allows students to learn STEM concepts, such as introductory physics, and practice the engineering design process. Survival Shelter 2.0 and Dragster 2.0 are two design projects that let students create an emergency survival shelter for hikers and a $CO_{2}$ racecar, respectively. In this case, students used \whitebox{} to create, analyze, and simulate their project designs. Between design iterations, the class explored their designs in Andromeda with the teacher acting as the facilitator. That is, the teacher uploaded data describing the students' projects to Andromeda; each point in the visualization represented a student's design. With the teacher controlling Andromeda, students used Andromeda to visualize, analyze, and compare their designs. 
     
    Data were collected from students, along with impressions from their teacher. We use these data to assess the success of the class collaboration. According to both the teacher and the students, Andromeda offered an opportunity for both collaborative and personal reflections. For example, students engaged in extended conversation with each other and the teacher while, collectively, the class explored their design-related data. Also, students felt that Andromeda helped them to compare their designs to other students in a friendly, but competitive manner. Finally, survey responses from the students support the known advantages of Andromeda by showing that, despite not having the mathematical background to understand dimensionality reduction, students learned about relations between variables and enjoyed using Andromeda. 
    
    Despite seeing clear advantages from using Andromeda in a collaborative, class setting, we discovered that Andromeda was slightly misused. Web-based Andromeda in its current form requires all data variables to be continuous. However, in this case study, the definition of continuous was conflated with numerical. We discuss the implications of these inaccuracies and potential improvements to Andromeda to improve its utility as a public, educational resource.  We also provide an example class activity aligned with Virginia's proposed Standards of Learning in data science. Hopefully, this will inspire educators to introduce collaborative data analysis tools such as Andromeda into their classrooms. 
AU  - Mia Taylor
AU  - Danny Mathieson
AU  - Leanna House
AU  - Chris North
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Andromeda in the Classroom: Collaborative Data Analysis for 8th Grade Engineering Design
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/41168
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--41168
ER  -