Dr Matthew Kerby, School of Politics and International Relations

In this presentation I discuss how I repurposed POLS8024: Quantitative Methods for Political Science from an in-situo, intensive hands-on, lab-based course to online deliver with minimal effort and without having to significantly alter the course objectives. Key to the successful transition involved using cloud-based to address the students’ main concerns about the move to remote learning: the absence of in-person instruction and support, statistical software hiccoughs, and a preestablished dislike of the existing CMS (Wattle). Specifically, I relied on software such as Slack, Dropbox, Googledocs and Youtube to deliver an effective and efficient update to the course. I will discuss the pros and cons of using these apps to provide a positive student learning experience, as well as the challenges and opportunities for further course development.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Matt Kerby is a senior lecturer, and POLS convenor in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. His research focuses career paths of political elites in western parliamentary democracies, with an emphasis on accountability and responsibility of government executives. Dr. Kerby teaches quantitative research methods at the undergraduate and graduate level. Prior to coming to the ANU he taught lectures and online/blended courses at the University of Ottawa, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Concordia University.