Student Research--an In-class Exercise

I have been preparing online in-class exercises for my Business Writing class this semester. The students are divided into four committees, which means four different exercises involving collaboration and keyed to whichever chapter or assignment is currently under review. Our latest chapter was devoted to designing illustrations (charts and graphs) to represent statistical data, which, for me, did not lend itself easily to tasks to be accomplished in forty minutes.

As I searched the internet for some inspiring ideas, I came across a site that creates charts and graphs based on data that individual users might enter. Obviously, as this is a needed service, I assumed that there would be other similar sites, but then I thought that rather than finding and evaluating these sites myself, I could ask one of my committees to do this instead as an in-class exercise and then ask them to share their findings with their peers. After that, the other committee work fell quickly into place, as I had the remaining three investigate federal, state, and international (the U.N.) websites to report on the type and scope of information, statistical or otherwise, that they might access. After all, one has to assemble the data before one can enter it into a site to create the representative illustration.

The students shared all their results by posting into their committee Canvas discussion boards for us to see from the large screen, and I will soon assemble their results as a single document to keep these available to all of them.

We also discussed the need to document the sources of any data they might find and use and the need to credit any online designer for illustrations they might create and use through the service. In the end, class proceeded energetically and it may have introduced the students to sources they might not have considered.