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The Education Futures Blog

This summer, John Moravec and Cristobal Cobo consulted on the development of a MOOC for the Inter-American Development bank: Datología: La toma de decisiones basada en datos – a course for policy makers on using data to help make better decisions.

As a free, online course, it is offered through the edX platform with a course start date of November 10, 2015. This initial run will be offered in Spanish. An English edition will run at a future date in 2016.

In this introductory course to using data to better inform policy decisions, participants will learn:

  • The importance of the relationship between analysis and interpretation of data in decision-making.
  • How to identify your problem and the variables for analysis.
  • What data analysis methodologies are more suitable for certain types of studies.
  • What types of displays exist and how to interpret them.
  • The application of the data in strategic planning and policy evaluation.

The course will also provide an orientation to the IDB’s Numbers for Development portal, which allows users to explore, visualize and download data from Latin America and the Caribbean. The data comes from diverse research analysis and sources used by the Bank to generate knowledge for its development interventions. The portal lets users find in a single place a variety of specialized datasets with indicators and raw data on topics such as education, labor markets, poverty, gender participation, global integration and agriculture policy, among others.Numbers for Development is aimed at researchers, students, policymakers, analysts, and others working in development issues and public policy.

For more information, visit the course’s page on edX.