Key facts

Overview

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Data Analysis in Ecology is a short, stand-alone training course that is taught entirely online. It can be taken from anywhere in the world and is relevant to an international audience. It will appeal to a variety of students and practitioners in conservation and management who want to improve their ability to display ecological data, and to use descriptive and inferential statistics to analyse their results from field surveys. The course introduces students to the use of the following software: QED statistics and R.
This course can be taken with academic credit (assignment of up to 2,000 words) or without academic credit. This page relates to taking the course WITH CREDIT. For information about taking this course without academic credit, please click here.

Description

Each topic is covered via guided reading, online activities, and discussion forums. All the reading material is embedded into the course, but students additionally have access to the University's electronic resources and online journals, which they will need to use for some of the activities. Participants are expected to study on, and contribute to the course for 10-15 hours per week. Additionally, if the course is being taken for accreditation, participants will have to complete an assessment. There is a suggested calendar of activity that participants can use to assist them in completing the course within the allocated five weeks.

Minimum IT Requirements

Please note that this course is taken online; to participate in our online courses we recommend the following minimum computer specification.

Accreditation

Those wishing to may apply to take the course with accreditation. The University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education offers Credit accumulation and Transfer Scheme (CATS) points for the course. Participants contributing to all the forums and successfully completing the assessment will obtain 10 CATS-equivalent points (FHEQ level 7) which may be counted towards a postgraduate qualification.
Assessment will be based on submission of an assignment, not exceeding 2000 words.

Programme details

The topics covered in the course in Data Analysis in Ecology include:

• The use of statistics and types of data
• Descriptive statistics
• Processing and presenting data
• The normal distribution and data transformations
• Hypothesis testing, confidence intervals and comparisons of two sample means
• Analysing frequencies
• Finding correlations
• Regression analysis
• Introducing analysis of variance; one-way and two-way ANOVAs
• When to use non-parametric statistics and a brief overview of advanced statistics

Staff

Dr Thomas Hesselberg

Role: Tutor

I am a research associate at the Oxford Silk Group at the Department of Zoology at Oxford University where my current research focuses on...more analysing the geometry of the spider's orb web as well as the rules governing their behaviour. I have a PhD in biomimetics on functional morphology and locomotory behaviour of ragworms from the University of Bath and have previously worked on flight control in insects in Germany and tropical orb spiders in Panama.

Most of these diverse projects have resulted in large data-sets which I have analysed using a wide range of statistical tests.

In addition to my research I am Director of Studies for biological sciences in Public Programmes at the Department for Continuing Education for which I also teach weekly classes in animal behaviour. I give tutorials and supervise undergraduate projects at the Department of Zoology.

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Assessment methods

• Students must engage with, and contribute to all the discussion forums via the course VLE;
• Students must submit a summative assignment of up to 2,000 words consisting of a portfolio of short exercises and calculations. Pass mark set at 50%. Work awarded 70% or over will qualify for a distinction.

Teaching methods

The course is taken entirely online but is tutor-led by an experienced University of Oxford researcher.

Fee options

Programme Fee

Course fee: £675.00

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Programmes including this module

This module can be studied as part of these programmes:

• Ecological survey techniques