{"id":78572,"date":"2014-05-22T15:00:04","date_gmt":"2014-05-22T19:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=78572"},"modified":"2023-01-25T16:00:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T21:00:39","slug":"statistics-douglass-short-term-course-redesign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2014\/05\/22\/statistics-douglass-short-term-course-redesign\/","title":{"rendered":"Gloom and misery begone? Statistics gets a major makeover from a student-professor team"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is hard to teach statistics.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s hard to learn, too,\u201d says psychology major Margaret Foster \u201915 of York, Maine.<\/p>\n

It’s a staple of the social sciences, yet learning stats has bedeviled generations of college students. At Bates, professors have tried to do something about it.<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, Bates psychologist Drake Bradley responded to the call to improve the teaching of statistics by using an innovative tool \u2014 the computer \u2014 to teach the ins and outs of data sets. He published a paper on it: “An interactive data-generating and answer-correcting system for problems in statistics.”<\/p>\n

Today, Professor of Psychology Amy Douglass is using her own innovative strategy.<\/p>\n

\"Professor<\/a>

Professor of Psychology Amy Douglass gathers her six-student team at the start of Short Term. Their goal: to transform how statistics is taught at Bates. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite tweaks to the Bates statistics course over the years, Douglass says that many students still have a hard time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the course is ever going to appeal to students who are less comfortable with statistics, I need to understand the student experience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

So Douglass took advantage of a distinctive new Bates program offered this Short Term.<\/p>\n

“We’re all about a continuous process of renewal.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Called “Innovative Pedagogy \/ Course (Re)Design,” the program gives faculty the time and support (in this case, Bates students) to rework an existing course or create a new one.<\/p>\n

It’s highly unusual in American higher education: On a wide scale, Bates is giving students the lead in improving how college courses are designed, deployed and taught.<\/p>\n

Douglass enlisted six students, including Foster, to improve the Bates statistics course, Psychology 218, and theirs was one of five Short Term courses whose goal was either to create a new course or improve an old one.<\/p>\n

For the college, the course redesign program means that “we’re all about a continuous process of renewal,” says President Clayton Spencer. The new and revised courses “create new oxygen for the curriculum.”<\/p>\n

\"\u201cIf<\/a>

\u201cIf the course is ever going to appeal to students who are less comfortable with statistics, I need to understand the student experience,\u201d says Professor of Psychology Amy Douglass. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

This spring, “Team Douglass” comprised Foster, Afifa Avril \u201915 of Decatur, Ga., Kelsey Berry \u201915 of Hollis, N.H., Eleanor Hough \u201916 of Summit, N.J., Patrece Joseph \u201914 of Mattapan, Mass., and Nina Tupper \u201914 of Kennebunk, Maine.<\/p>\n

They did their work by reviewing current best practices, reading literature and doing a survey of students who had taken statistics.<\/p>\n

Meeting four days a week with Douglass, the students also spent time outside class on various projects, from evaluating the effectiveness of quizzes to looking at how papers should be assigned.<\/p>\n

Among other things, they learned from the survey that not one of 50 students surveyed felt that the textbook was at all helpful. On the other hand, every student said the weekly review sessions offered by Brian Pfohl, the department’s assistant in instruction, were \u201cvery helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n

By next winter, students who take statistics \u2014 required for the 70 or so majors who graduate in psychology or neuroscience each year \u2014 will experience a revised course that has student fingerprints all over it.<\/p>\n

Here’s a general idea of how the course was formerly structured:<\/p>\n