Lesson 3: Evaluating and Implementing a Water Campaign

Objective:

Students will complete the design of their water usage Participatory Sensing campaign, create the campaign using the campaign authoring tool, and implement a mock campaign to evaluate the feasibility of the campaign.

Materials:

Water Campaign (LMR_4.2_Water Campaign) from previous lesson
Posters from previous lesson
Markers
Campaign Authoring Instructions handout (LMR_4.3_Campaign Authoring)

Essential Concepts:

Statistical questions guide a participatory sensing campaign so that we can learn about a community or ourselves. These campaigns should be evaluated before implementing to make sure they are reasonable and ethically sound.

Lesson:

Student teams will continue designing their water usage Participatory Sensing campaign. Allow them a couple of minutes to review the information on their posters before moving on to round 4.
Round 4: Now that the teams have decided on a trigger and the type of data needed, they will discuss and create survey questions/prompts to ask when the trigger is set. The questions should consider all of the possible data they might collect at this trigger event.
Once teams have created their survey questions/prompts, they will evaluate each survey question. For each question they should consider:
1. What type of survey question/prompt will this be (e.g. single choice, text, photo, numerical, discrete numerical, categorical, location)?
2. How does this question/prompt help address the research question?
3. Does the question/prompt need to be reworded? (Is it clear what is being asked for? Do they know how to answer it?) One way to do this is to pair teams and take turns asking each other prompts. The team that is being asked may explain what information they think the question is asking for.
If survey questions need to be rewritten, students will decide as a team on the changes.
Once finalized, they will record the survey question/prompt that goes along with each data variable on their Water Campaign handout (LMR_4.2), being cognizant of question bias.
Round 5: In teams, students will now generate three statistical questions that they might answer with the data they will collect and to guide their campaign. They need to make sure that their statistical questions are interesting and relevant to the water usage topic. They will record these statistical questions on their posters. Remind students that they will also have data about the date, time, and place of data collection.
Confirm that the questions are statistical and that they can be answered with the data the students propose to collect by circulating around the room to check on each team. Each team will decide on no more than 3 statistical questions to guide their campaign.
Now that they have all the pieces of the campaign, teams will evaluate whether their campaign is reasonable and ethically sound. Each team will hold a discussion on the following questions:
1. Are answers to your survey questions likely to vary when the trigger occurs? (If not, you'll get bored entering the same data again and again)
2. Can the team carry out the campaign?
3. Do triggers occur so rarely that you'll have very little data? Do they occur so often that you'll get frustrated entering too much data?
4. Ethics: Would sharing these data with strangers or friends be embarrassing or undermine someone's privacy?
5. Can you change your trigger or survey questions to improve your evaluation?
6. Will you be able to gather enough relevant data from your survey questions to be able to answer your statistical questions?
Students have collaboratively created their Water Usage Participatory Sensing campaign. They will now use the Campaign Authoring tool to create a campaign like the ones they see on their smart devices or the computer.
Distribute the Campaign Authoring Instructions handout (LMR_4.3). Each team will select a member to type the information required to create their campaign. Then, they will follow the instructions on the handout.

LMR_4.3
To name their campaign, a naming convention is suggested. Otherwise, you will have multiple campaigns with the same name. For example, teams may include their team name or number in order to easily identify their campaigns.
Once their campaign is authored, students will save their work and make edits after they mock implement the campaign for a few days.
They will collect data during the mock implementation of their campaign using the information they recorded on the Water Campaign handout (LMR_4.2) and record the answers to the survey/prompts on paper. They will make observations about how well their campaign worked and what improvements or changes need to be made.
Round 6 will be completed once students have mock-implemented their campaigns.

Class Scribes:

One team of students will give a brief talk to discuss what they think the 3 most important topics of the day were.

Homework

Students will collect data by mock implementing their Water Usage Participatory Sensing campaign.