Northeastern Educational Research Institution (NERA) Conference

Attending a conference is one of the best decisions that an individual can make. It broadens your perspective on some issues, and one is soon able to have a deeper understanding of integral matters. I recently had a once in a lifetime opportunity to attend a Northeastern Educational Research Institution (NERA) Conference for the first time. It is one of the best decisions I ever made as I learned a lot of interesting things and also got an opportunity to interact with beautiful people from all walks of life. All this was courtesy of Dr. Ludlow and Jill who took the time out of their busy schedules to inform me of this event while providing me with a proper invitation.

The workshops were quite enlightening. Dr. Thomas Christ from the University of Bridgeport presented a seminar on how to create a viable mixed methods research proposal. It was an excellent opportunity for me to gain an in-depth understanding of Mixed Methods (MM) and Action Research (AR) which are crucial in coupling qualitative (QL) and quantitative (QN) data all in one study. I learned that the Mixed Methods (MM) entails conducting surveys with both inputs to find an appropriate answer to the research question. Moreover, Andrew Jones and J. Carl Setzer were instrumental in helping me understand how to use R to generate technical, research and social reports automatically. From these researchers, I acknowledge the importance of harnessing Google and using it as an asset during an academic venture.
The icing on the cake came during dinner. Dr. Craig Wells from UMass Amherst graced the presidential address was by who went on to describe the errors in the statistical hypothesis wittily. He referred to Type I like a situation when a man tells a doctor he is pregnant while Type II was the doctor informing a woman that she was not pregnant. Moreover, his emphasis was on the dangers of using the p-value as the sole determining factor and urged the use of Effective Size to interpret the analysis essentially.