3 | <p>“Figure of the Day” is a clever approach to help students learn to interpret graphs that avoids inducing anxiety in students by establishing from the outset that students will not have all the information necessary to be 100% correct. Graphs are presented without axes labels or legends, and interpretation is turned into a puzzle, where any observation about the data is potentially helpful. What results is that students look much more carefully at all the details of a graph - the colors, sizes, shapes, arrangement, magnitude, and try to piece together a story. This is exactly what experienced scientists do, much more often than starting with a figure legend, for example. Different students will notice different features, and the value of multiple student voices is often really evident - small groups or a class can together often uncover the meaning of a graph even without the axes labels!</p>
| 3 | <p>I carried out this activity during the first 3-5 minutes of each class section (twice a week). My classroom was organized in tables of ~6 students. Each table had a TV monitor where I projected the figure (Active Learning Classroom). Thus, it served as a routinized activity to make students talk to each other during those first minutes of class. After their brief discussion, I went to each table asking for a single observation, or more specific questions regarding patterns, statistics, and interpretation. I started the adaptation after implementing the original module for several weeks. I decided to add this adaptation in order to evaluate the students and see whether they have learned to identify ambiguity and biases in data figures and thus provide a discussion on how to avoid it when making their own figures.</p>
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