Jul 9, 2018 – Aug 10, 2018 | Online at FutureLearn.com

MOOC: Transparent and Open Social Science Research

Demand for evidence-based policy is growing, but so is recognition that limited transparency in social science research has contributed to what many have called a crisis of reproducibility and credibility.

With this 5-week, self-paced Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), you can explore the causes of limited transparency in social science research, as well as tools to make your own work more open and reproducible.

Transparent and Open Social Science Research is based on Professor Ted Miguel‘s UC Berkeley course on methods for transparent research. He, Project Scientist Garret Christensen, and Postdoc Fernando Hoces de la Guardia lead the online version. They will be online to answer your questions and facilitate discussions.

In addition to providing a solid theoretical foundation and extensive reading list for researchers looking to make their research more transparent, the course also gives opportunities for hands-on practice with tools like p-curve and the Open Science Framework (OSF). The topics we cover include:

An overview of the reproducibility crisis and the open science movement
Publication bias
Pre-registration and pre-analysis plans
Replication
Meta-analysis
Open data
Data visualization
The future of open social science

This course is hosted by FutureLearn, a platform that uses a social learning model to better engage online learners. This means that, rather than having discussions in forums, learners can start a discussion at any point in the course, just like in a physical classroom.

Learners are expected to spend about 4 hours per week on course videos, readings, and exercises.

The course is open to anyone, anywhere, but learners with some statistical background may get more out of it.