ABSTRACT
The remarkable growth of online and blended learning throughout the world reinforces the need for improved data analysis methods. Fortunately, newer and more effective computing options make it possible to provide useful information to a broad range of constituencies, such as policymakers, faculty, students, and the public at large. Today, advances in computing technology have freed us from the daunting computational drudgery that discouraged analyses in the past, currently enabling us to work with much larger data sets. Additional information on analyzing data using nonparametric statistics can be found from online resources such as StatSoft, an electronic statistics textbook from Statistica. In the final analysis, any procedure produces value if it can provide useful information to those trying to understand the impact of online and blended learning. Numerical variables carry more information than categorical variables, nominal or ordinal. Interval variables are constructed such that the units are equivalent all along the scale.
