The course as I first encountered it followed what George Cobb termed the consensus curriculum (Cobb, 2007).

We talked about:

• means, medians, modes and standard deviations, variances, and ranges
• bar charts, pie charts, and histograms
• combinatorial and enumerative probability
• venn diagrams and probability rules
• the binomial, poisson, and normal probability distributions
• introduction to survey sampling
• the central limit theorem and sampling variability, estimation, confidence intervals, and hypothesis testing
• the one-sample Z test, the one-sample T-test, the paired T-test, the independent two sample T-test, the two-sample Z test, and chi-squared tests
• simple linear regression models

We tried to cram all this material into an 8-wk term, with only 6 weeks of instruction, and two weeks for exams and review. There were six homework assignments students completed, a midterm and a final exam, and students were asked to participate in discussion board activities.

It was an ambitious syllabus for sure. In my early enthusiasm, I saw no problem with it – if our students were here to learn statistics, then we should teach them statistics. I took AP Statistics when I was in high school, and obtained a Masters in Statistics, and this was how I was taught statistics.

Under the patient mentoring of my boss, the research core curriculum director, I slowly began to realize that (1) these were not valuable skills for our students, and (2) this was too confusing for our students.

I had forgotten that I barely understood statistics myself when I first encountered it. If I, someone who has had a lifelong love for numbers, didn’t fully understand statistics when I was taught it at the AP level, then how could I expect my students, mostly self-styled ‘not number people’, to reach a higher standard?

References and further reading:

Cobb, G. W. (2007). The introductory statistics course: A ptolemaic curriculum? Technology Innovations in Statistics Education, 1(1).

Welcome to my blog! I hope to use this space to document my thoughts, deliberations, and decisions as I update a statistics course I teach. This page will focus on my experiences teaching and designing HSCI 3117 Principles of Biostatistics for the Health Sciences.

The course: HSCI3117 is an online second course in statistics offered in the Department of Clinical Research and Leadership at George Washington University’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences. It was first offered in 2016 and is scheduled to run every fall term. HSCI 2117 is a pre-requisite for students taking HSCI 3117.

My experience: I began teaching the course in the fall of 2017, the second term in which it was offered. In 2018 I was hired as the course director. In 2018, we began to consider revamping the course, in order to better align it with HSCI 2117 and to create a 2-course sequence as opposed to parallel courses at different levels. This, bringing us to the present day, has led to a near total re-conceptualization, that I am now beginning to design and implement.

Welcome to my blog! I hope to use this space to document my thoughts, deliberations, and decisions as I update a statistics course I teach. This page will focus on my experiences teaching and designing HSCI 2117 Introduction to Statistics for the Health Sciences.

The course: HSCI2117 is an online introductory course in statistics offered in the Department of Clinical Research and Leadership at George Washington University’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences. It was first offered in 2015, as a 15-wk course, and was converted into an 8-wk course in 2016. The course attracts many pre-nursing students, as well as large cohorts of active military service members and adult learners. The course is offered in six terms each year, with at least one section running each term, and usually attracts around 175 students per year. Each section is capped at 20 students.

My experience: I began teaching the course in the spring of 2016, the second term in which it was offered, and have taught it ever since. I took a lead in condensing the 15-wk version into the 8-wk version, and in 2017 was hired as the course director. In 2018, we began to consider revamping the course, which, bringing us to the present day, has led to a near total re-conceptualization, that I am now beginning to implement.