Course  »  How the course works

Online videos

The course is centered about a series of video tutorials.  There are roughly 12 hours of videos for the Basic course and another 8 for the advanced course.

Schedule

The course is always available online.  Attendees watch the videos on their own schedule.  Any questions may be submitted online, and will be addressed in the chat or by zoom.  Zoom discussions will be scheduled as needed.

Group discussions

A key part of the class is the opportunity for group discussions with the instructor.  We will also record these and make them available to all students.  For students in Europe or Australia I will schedule discussions as needed.

Exercises

For all modules there are PDFs that offer the opportunity to work through an analysis on your own, with step-by-step instructions.  If you have any questions, we can discuss these during the zoom calls

Readings

For most modules there are optional readings that provide additional details on the topic.

Software

We will be using the software Comprehensive Meta-Analysis, or CMA. This software was developed with funding from the National Institutes of Health and is used by tens of thousands of researchers throughout the world.  It incorporates many features that make ideal for teaching including the ability to present results in intuitive ways and to generate detailed text reports that explain the meaning of the statistics.  Full disclosure:  The instructor has a commercial interest in CMA.
All students will be given a free extended trial license for the duration of the course.
While we will be using this software for the examples, the course is primarily about meta-analysis rather than this specific software, and can be applied regardless of what software you employ in the future.

Handouts

For each video you may download a PDF that incorporates all components of the video in screen-shots and text.  You can use this to take notes while watching the videos and to review the course in the future.