AERA in the City of Brotherly Love

I am so far behind on updating this blog! I know I am forgiven but life has been especially busy since February.

In April, I attended the largest educational conference in the country, the American Educational Research Association (AERA). This was my second time to attend the conference, but my first time to attend as a speaker! :) What a great experience for this young, doctoral student. Currently, I am busy writing proposals for next year's conference...wish me luck! 

I decided to take advantage of a few great opportunities that AERA has, including attending a workshop before the conference began. I attended a conference on HLM (Hierarchical Linear Modeling) to broaden my statistics knowledge a bit more. After taking classes for 8 straight years (not all on my Ph.D.), I have decided I'm done! But, I knew I could devote one entire day (8am-5pm) to learning about this important topic. Man, am I glad I did! This was by far one of the best workshops I have ever attended. The speakers knew the content well, presented it by explaining the theory and conceptual framework, then walked through several problems with the attendees. Additionally, they gave us PDFs of the PowerPoint and handouts and annotated print-outs from the statistics software. I learned so much and got a really good basic understanding of this statistical analysis.

After the workshop, I attended a few conference sessions, including one led by my research idol (and got to meet him!). Then, on the final day of the conference, I gave my presentation. It was a roundtable presentation over a study I had conducted with my advisor and other graduate students. It was a great experience, and I cannot wait to present at AERA again in the future! 

As the conference was in the "City of Brotherly Love", Philadelphia, I also ventured to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. :)