IGNOU’s STRIDE (Staff Training and Research Institute of Distance Education organised a One Day Workshop on Statistical Interface into Research for teachers and academics at IGNOU headquarters on March 9, 2018.

The Workshop also had research scholars who are enrolled in MPhil and PhD programme of IGNOU.

This workshop’s aim was to impart training about use of statistics in research along with hands on practice for strengthening statistical base for research. 
Jitendra Kr Srivastav, Registrar, IGNOU inaugurated the Workshop.

Srivastava highlighted the importance of statistical tools to understand data. He said that raw data in itself was of no use unless some information could be culled out from it. He complimented STRIDE for organising the workshop and said that such workshops would benefit teachers and academics from all disciplines. 

Earlier the Workshop began with a Welcome Address by PK Biswas, Director STRIDE who said that this workshop was special as it included even research scholars enrolled in various research programmes of IGNOU.

The objectives of the Workshop were outlined by Anita Priyadarshini, Workshop Coordinator.  

She said that the researchers grapple with the choice of the right statistical tools while doing the research and this introductory workshop would set the tone for the future workshops.

The workshop had 4 sessions of 90 minutes each. 

The topics focused on Research and Statistics, Research and Inferential Statistics, Research and Modeling.

The resource persons for this one day training were well known national level experts: Ravi K Mahajan, Professor and Coordinator, Department of Statistics, USOL, Panjab University; Kalpana Mahajan, Professor and Former Chairperson, Department of Statistics, USOL, Panjab University; and Qazi Mazhar Ali, Professor and Former Chairperson Department of Statistics and Operations research and Former Head, Computer Centre, Aligarh Muslim University.

Ravi K Mahajan dwelt with the basics of statistics and explained concept like sampling and how should one go about choosing the right sample which is representative of the population.

Kalpana Mahajan took participants through the various tests to check veracity of the data analysis.

Qazi touched upon the system’s approach to the research problem and how mathematically those can be analyzed to arrive at results.

The workshop methodology included interactive sessions with Resource Persons, presentations as well as hands on practice for acquiring statistical skills for research.

This workshop enhanced the understanding of statistics and train / refresh faculty in the use of statistical tools and techniques and helped in building capacity of teachers, academics and research scholars in conducting research.  

In view of the demand from the participants, a more advanced workshop of longer duration on this topic will be conducted in the future.