Friday, March 29, 2024

How To Choose The Right Software For Your Online Science Course

Share

If you are wondering how to choose the right software for your online science courses, look no further. This simple guide will break down the key considerations you need to make when choosing the best software. Remember that this choice is crucial to the success of both your students and you, as their teacher. We will compare two popular software choices, SPARKvue™ and Graphical Analysis™, and decide based on their data collection and analysis, cost, and capabilities, which is best for your students’ needs and your teaching practices.

Let’s get started.

What Do They Have In Common?

Before we begin the comparisons between these two software solutions for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) online courses, let’s first address their similarities.

Both software choices support Mac and Windows, Chromebook, Apple iPads and smartphones, and Android tablets and smartphones. Moreover, they are both designed specifically for data collection, visualization, and analysis and are two of the top choices for educators and science students as they provide a great user experience.

What Sets Them Apart?

Now that you have seen what these two software solutions have in common, let’s dive into the differences between them so you can make an informed decision about which to choose for your science courses.

Purpose

Knowing the purpose, costs, and capabilities of each software solution will allow you to pick which is best for you. SPARKvue is a data-collection software solution designed to help students investigate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics concepts with tools for real-time data collection, visualization, analysis, coding, and collaboration. It provides a powerful, efficient, and easy-to-use all-in-one platform with intuitive tools that allow students to streamline experiments for deeper learning.

This software boasts a consistent user experience across devices, whether students are using the free app on an iPad or smartphone, or a site license. It is continuously being improved and updated with new features and integrations, all of which enhance the user experience across devices.

Meanwhile, Graphical Analysis is a data-collection software solution with table, graph, and video tools that are designed to help students collect, display, and analyze real-time sensor data. This software solution boasts a video display feature that allows an imported video to be synced with sensor data. This feature can be very helpful for students who are reviewing experiments

This software is available with no fees in its basic version, called Graphical Analysis. However, it is also available as a subscription version called Graphical Analysis Pro. New features on either version may require a subscription to access them.

Costs

Both software solutions offer the ability to collect measurements from multiple sensors or a compatible interface simultaneously, collect data in real-time or enter measurements manually, and draw predictions before collecting data, free of charge.

However, Graphical analysis charges extra for the ability to adjust data sampling rates for individual sensors, access dozens of experiment files with configured settings and displays, automate data collection for remote logging experiments, and use code to control data collection.

These are just some of the features that SPARKvue offers for free that are part of the subscription costs for Graphical Analysis. There are more features relating to data display and analysis, coding, collaboration, data sharing and remote learning, and tools for instructions and assessments that come at an additional cost with Graphic Analysis, compared with its free counterpart.

As you can see, Graphical Analysis is the option that might end up costing you more money, however, for many, the subscription fees are worth it for the capabilities of this software solution.

Capabilities

A great feature of SPARKvue is that it allows students to customize their online science journals with selectable displays. These different displays then provide real-time insights into students’ experiments. They can view as many as six displays at any one time, which makes it easier to focus on the most relevant findings while disregarding less relevant formats.

This software solution offers the following displays: Live Data Bar (displays current sensor reading without recording data), table, meter (digits), meter (analog), line graph (up to six), bar graph, bar meter, Fast Fourier transform (FFT), oscilloscope, GIS map, import image, capture media (image or video), assessment Q&A, and text.

Meanwhile, Graphical Analysis provides students with a structured, albeit slightly rigid template for graphing experimental data. They can begin with a table and a line graph template, which they can then expand by turning on the meter display or showing two additional graphs for further data comparison. The free displays with Graphical Analysis are limited to a table, meter (digits), and line graphs (up to three).

Graphical Analysis Pro provides access to additional display features, such as Live Data Bar, table, meter (digits), line graph, bar graph, FFT, oscilloscope, and video syncing.

Further Differences

There are many more differences between the two software solutions, such as how they allow collaboration, their capabilities in coding, data analysis and export, and teacher support. For more information on the differences and similarities between these two software solutions and their pricing, look online at helpful comparison sites so that you can make an informed decision on which is best for your teaching needs.

Hopefully, this guide to choosing the right software solution for your online science courses has been helpful. We have just scratched the surface on the comparisons between these two great choices, with a focus on their purpose, costs and capabilities, particularly in displaying data for analysis.

It has been shown that Graphical Analysis and SPARKvue are excellent software solutions for data collection, visualization, and analysis, as well as coding and collaboration. While the former offers only a limited number of tools and displays for free, the latter has a much wider range of free features and displays. Graphical Analysis Pro boasts more features but comes with a subscription fee. You will have to weigh up the benefits of each software solution, the costs and capabilities, in order to decide which is best for you and your students.

Read more

More News