December 11, 2007 Teaching and Learning webinar presented by Mark L. Berenson, Montclair State University, and hosted by Jackie Miller, he Ohio State University. As we consider how we might improve our introductory statistics courses, we are constrained by a variety of environmental/logistical and pedagogical issues that must be addressed if we want our students to complete the course saying it was useful, it was relevant and practical, and that it increased their communicational, computational, technological and analytical skills. If not properly considered, such issues may result in the course being considered unsatisfying, incomprehensible, and/or unnecessarily obtuse. This Webinar focuses on key course content concerns that must be addressed and engages participants in discussing resolutions. Participants also had the opportunity to describe and discuss other content barriers to effective statistical pedagogy.
September 9, 2008 Teaching and Learning webinar presented by Joan Garfield and Michelle Everson, University of Minnesota and hosted by Jackie Miller, The Ohio State University. This webinar discusses issues and challenges in preparing teachers of statistics at the secondary and college level. It then provides a case study of a graduate level course taught at the University of Minnesota that focuses on developing excellent teachers of statistics. The course is based on the GAISE guidelines and helps the students develop both knowledge of teaching (pedagogical knowledge) and specific knowledge about teaching statistics (pedagogical content knowledge). Topics, readings, activities, assessments, and discussions are described. In addition, the webinar discusses how the course was transformed from a face-to-face setting to an online environment.
May 12, 2009 Teaching and Learning hour-long webinar panel discussion presented by Laura Kubatko, The Ohio State University; Danny Kaplan, Macalester College; and Jeff Knisley, East Tennessee State University, and hosted by Jackie Miller, The Ohio State University. National reports such as Bio2010 have called for drastic improvements in the quantitative education that biology students receive. The three panelists are involved in three differently structured integrative programs aimed to give biology students the statistics that are useful in learning and doing biology. The three programs have some surprising things in common for teaching introductory statistics. All three involve connecting calculus and statistics. All three reach beyond the mathematical topics usually encountered in intro statistics in important ways. All three aim to keep the mathematics and statistics strongly connected to biology. The panelists describe their different approaches to teaching statistics for biology and discuss how and why an integrated approach gives advantages. Important issues are how to tie statistics advantageously with calculus, how to keep "advanced" mathematical and statistical topics accessible to introductory-level biology students, and how to employ computation productively. The discussion contrasts a comprehensive "team" approach (at ETSU) with stand-alone courses (at Macalester and at OSU) and refers to the institutional opportunities and constraints that have shaped the programs at their different institutions.
The idea that the examination of a relatively small number of randomly selected individuals can furnish dependable information about the characteristics of a vast unseen universe is an idea so powerful that only familiarity makes it cease to be exciting Is a quote from American Educational Statistician Helen Mary Walker (1891 - 1983). Helen Walker was the first women to serve as the president of the American Statistical Association and this quote is from her December 27, 1944 presidential address at the 104th annual meeting of the ASA in Washington, D.C. The full address may be found in the "Journal of the American Statistical Association" (1945; vol. 40, #229 p. 1-10).
A cartoon to teach the idea that sampling variability depends on the size of the sample, and not on the size of the population (as long as the sample is a small part of the population). Cartoon drawn by British cartoonist John Landers based on an idea from Dennis Pearl. Free to use in the classroom and for course websites.
A cartoon to teach about the use of a placebo to better control experimental studies. Drawn by British cartoonist John Landers based on an idea by Dennis Pearl. Free to use in the classroom or on course websites.