UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA

Welcome to My Homepage!

I am Associate Dean for Administration and Research and Associate Professor of Educational Research in the College of Education at the University of South Carolina. I have been a member of the faculty since 1990 and arrived here shortly after earning my Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Although administrative duties consume most of my work day, I still enjoy teaching introductory courses in educational statistics and a course in nonparametric statistics (offered every other fall semester). I also teach the introduction to research course each summer, typically via distance education to between 70 and 100 students. My course links provide access to materials from many of the courses I have taught over the past years. These materials include the course syllabi, presentation images, and course assignments and tests.

I am currently serving as an evaluator for the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE), a multi-site project funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other public and private agencies. In the past I have conducted evaluations of projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the South Carolina Department of Education, and the South Carolina Arts Commission.

My current research interests include nonparametric statistics, statistical education, and effect size analysis. I am an active member of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and have served as program chair for the quantitative methods section of Division D of this organization. I am a past president of the Educational Statisticians Special Interest Group of AERA where I regularly present at the annual meeting. I am also a member of the American Statistical Association and the American Psychological Association.

Courses

Introduction to Educational Research (EDRM 700)

The objective of this course is to teach students how to critically read educational research. My emphasis is on empirically-based group studies, though I also give some attention to the basics of other methods. I'm a proponent of theoretically-based experimental studies, so my emphasis reflects this bias. This is a good course to take early in the sequence of graduate courses.

http://www.ed.sc.edu/seaman/edrm700

Educational Statistics I (EDRM 710)

This is a first course in statistics as applied to educational, behavioral, and sociological investigation. Topics cover descriptive and inferential methods for one- and two-sample studies. My approach is to integrate methods with a research context. In this spirit, the homework accompanying each class involves preparing a report to answer research questions using the supplied data.

http://www.ed.sc.edu/seaman/edrm710

Educational Statistics II (EDRM 711)

This is the sequel to Educational Statistics I. In this course we consider methods for multi-sample studies, as well as studies that employ multiple explanatory variables. I emphasize the estimation of effects for the research questions of interest. I believe that these usually involve comparisons of pairs of groups, so I put a great deal of emphasis on so-called multiple comparison procedures.

http://www.ed.sc.edu/seaman/edrm711

Nonparametric Statistics (EDRM 712)

This course introduces data analytic methods that do not require the strict assumptions of common parametric procedures. The presented methods parallel those presented in EDRM 711 and EDRM 712. This course is especially beneficial to those who will work with small or "messy" data sets.

http://www.ed.sc.edu/seaman/edrm712

Design and Analysis of Experiments (EDRM 810)

This course teaches common experimental designs for studying behavioral and social phenomena. I also present descriptive and inferential statistics for analyzing experimentally-obtained data. My emphasis is on developing a general framework for both design and analysis that will allow students who take this course to readily develop more complex experimental methods that go beyond what I explicitly present in class. Even though the course is about experiments, the analytic methods we discuss are also valuable tools for analyzing observational data.

http://www.ed.sc.edu/seaman/edrm810

Seminar in Educational Research (EDRM 878)

I occasionally teach an advanced seminar that focuses on philosophy of science as well as current issues in educational research. The course methods focus on reading and discussing provocative articles. In so doing I hope to develop an appreciation for the logical basis of both science and quantitative methods as applied to the study of social and behavioral questions, specifically in the education domain.

http://www.ed.sc.edu/seaman/edrm878