A day late but I am so excited to share: today at the University of Minnesota, the CATALST teaching team tried out our latest new activity!

The activity uses linked random devices in Tinkerplots™ to explore the accuracy of a diagnostic test (with fixed sensitivity & specificity) applied to different populations (with varying base rates of the condition detected by the test).   

We hoped that through this activity students might increase their fluency creating models.  We also hoped students would gain some insight about how base rates can affect the accuracy of a diagnostic test, overall.  Finally, we hoped that the activity would continue to nourish habits that lead to healthy, functional cooperative learning groups.

It was an exciting day! Students quickly became immersed in discussions and there were lots of large hand motions as they justified their explanations to one another.  There were even a few enthusiastic yelps of excitement over the linked spinners branching out from each other in Tinkerplots™.  In the large-group wrap-up discussion, we were surprised (instructors included) to make some unanticipated connections to a previous activity.  It was great!  We all learned!

The instructors who observed the activity have some changes we'd like to make for next time; maybe we'll report back to you all on next year's Groundhog Day!

Cheers!