Tyler Preast

12/12/17

IS 301-01

Reflection Paper

Techniques of Computer Analysis really is unlike any other class I’ve taken at this school. When I first looked at my program evaluation and saw that I had to take it, I really didn’t know what to expect. I had a vague idea that it might be some kind of information technology or programming class, but I really wasn’t sure. Even after my first several classes, I still wasn’t completely sure what we were meant to be learning in TCA. We were going through lessons on measures of central tendency and learning how to evaluate data that is gathered from experiences. That in itself is interesting to me, but it wasn’t until the introduction of SPSS that I really understood how any of that fit it with the concept of computers.

Starting with the first part of the class, the lectures, I thought it was well run. I’m typically the kind of person to lose my focus when teachers stand up and give lectures, but not so much in this class. I enjoyed the way that lectures were run and I thought that the quizzes helped to keep us honest as far as keeping up with the reading and paying attention in class goes. I took the Politics of China class too, and the blog posts are a theme in both of those classes. The blog posts are the element that I dislike the most by far about this class. In fact, I think it’s the only part of this class that I didn’t enjoy. To be fair, my poor grade on blog posts is entirely my fault, I always viewed them as more of a hindrance than a helper in my progression in the class, and because of that didn’t use them for what they were meant for. I believe that if I could take this class again, I would actually keep up with the blog posts on a weekly basis and I think I would like the idea of them a lot more.

Moving on from that, the worksheets by far were the most stimulating part of the class. I really like the idea of a reverse classroom. Coming in to class and doing the worksheets there was extremely helpful for me, especially because the professor was in class to assist with aspect of SPSS that I didn’t fully grasp. The workbook helped guide me through every step of the way. One thing that kind of struck me as funny is that you can never really grasp the concepts of SPSS on your own; you actually need the workbook to be successful. Sometimes I started to think that I really understood what was going on and that I could successfully complete the worksheets without the help of the workbook, but I was quickly reminded of how untrue that really is as I would almost instantly get lost without the step by step directions that the workbook provides.

SPSS is the first software that I’ve ever used to do statistical analysis. Before this class, I’ve always been told that there’s two kinds of methods in political science: qualitative and quantitative. Throughout my college career, we have always used qualitative analysis to examine a particular scenario. This class presented me with my first opportunity to use quantitative analysis on a practical level, and I think it provided me with great experience to use going forward. I really started to get the hang of running the data from the worksheets into SPSS, which was very helpful when it came to entering my own data from our group project into the program as well.

The group project was my absolute favorite part of the class. Typically, I don’t work as well in a group setting as I do alone, but I enjoyed the fact that this project involved so much hands on teamwork. Our group didn’t really know each other very well before the project, but we worked well together as a team. We brainstormed quickly to come up with what we wanted to study, and then made a theory on our topic relatively quickly as well. The most stimulating part of the project was developing the procedures for our experiment. We decided to employ the survey method, and went back and forth for a long time on who exactly we should be surveying. If this project had been done on an individual basis, I do not think it would have gone as well as it did at all. There were a lot of individual ideas thrown out in the group that were tossed back and forth and eventually pushed to the wayside in favor of another idea. The point is, the best course of action was always decided through open dialogue, as our collective minds had greater power than just one of our individual minds