Ciao class and welcome to SW652 Advanced Research and Statistics.

. I am looking forward to reconnecting with you all and learning more about how you are blending your practice wisdom and experiences with your ideas about research. I have been enthusiastically engaged in creating a learning community for our work together this fall and am eager to share it all with you. Last Spring, I had the great pleasure of meeting you all and spending some time with you hearing about what you personally felt would make you successful on your journey through this program. It was important to me that whatever platform was created for your learning this semester that it included the things you shared with me on that day. Equally important was creating a platform that would enable deep learning in relation to research and statistics, rather than just rote memorization or technical application of mathematical formulae and statistical computer programming. Consequently, I isolated four principles which I then drew on to update the course: review and practice, two principles you all identified, and reflection and integration, two principles that I value as important to learning and mastery. Every aspect of this course will draw on one or all of these principles. For example, I will be facilitating the course as a blended course. What that means is that we will have four classes where our learning environment will happen virtually online. Blending the face to face learning with online learning enables opportunities to purposefully and consistently review and practice, and reflect and integrate. Throughout the semester our class structure will follow an AAB pattern with two face to face (F2F) sessions where you and I will engage relevant content, sharing and questioning our learning, thinking, and ideas about the course material. These 2 consecutive F2F sessions will always be followed by one online session where you will have a chance to review and practice the F2F content that was just covered through computer statistical simulations, practice assignments, online reviews, podcasts, and reflection journals. In this manner, you will discover important content throughout the course which you can then re-discover or reveal via review, practice, reflection, and integration. You may be wondering whether you will be on your own during our online sessions and I can assure that you wont be. I have built in multiple accessible sources of support, guidance, and direction during the online sessions. Rather it will be more like you will be in your own private learning space digesting the material and engaging it at your own pace. This may be the first online learning experience for many of you. As you might expect, learning online is a bit different from traditional face-to-face learning. The two absolutely essential elements required for success in an online course are mutual commitment and mutual trust. Since some of our time together is online, "commitment" will be demonstrated by completing and posting your assignments and discussions as directed (and on time!). My commitment as your course facilitator will be demonstrated by following your discussions, guiding discussion when needed, providing feedback on your work, and responding promptly to your questions. I really want us together to fully take in research and statistics - to push ourselves beyond how to crunch numbers, navigate statistical computer packages, and manipulate data this semester. If by the end of our time together, you can engage your identity and exemplify your voice as a scholar-practitioner, we will have both succeeded in our work together. See you soon, Tien Ung