Mathematics, statistics faculty attend 10th United States Conference on Teaching Statistics

Faculty in the Elon University Department of Mathematics and Statistics — Andrew Dellinger, Emily Elrod, Heather Barker, Laura Taylor, Nicholas Bussberg and Ryne VanKrevelen — attended the United States Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS). The conference was held from June 1 to June 3 at the Penn Stater Conference Center and Hotel on the campus of Pennsylvania State University.

The theme for this year’s conference was “Communicating with/about Data.” Sessions for the conference focused on two broad subthemes: helping students to become better communicators of the process and results of their statistical analysis and helping teachers become better communicators to their students to develop their understanding of statistical concepts and statistical methods.

In addition to attending keynote talks, sessions and poster sessions, each of the faculty members shared their own experiences around the conference theme.

Barker and Bussberg shared their experiences with using alternative grading methods in their statistics classes during a poster session titled, “Alternative grading practices for statistics courses.” Bussberg shared his experience using an ungrading approach, and Barker shared her experience using specifications grading.

Participants were eager to ask questions about these methods as well as share their own experiences.

VanKrevelen, Dellinger and Barker presented a poster based on research they conduction alongside Mark Weaver. The poster was titled “A multi-instructor creation and implementation of a free question bank for introductory statistics.” This poster highlighted the work of a group of six introductory statistics instructors to create a free, online question bank that can be used by all introductory statistics instructors at Elon. This is an alternative to question banks that are linked to text books that students have to pay to access. The work done by these instructors was supported by an Elon University Student Government Association-Academic Technology Committee Open Educational Resources Grant.

Taylor and Bussberg presented a poster titled “Alumni writing in statistics in early careers.” Taylor and Bussberg investigated the writing habits of alumni who had graduated from Elon’s statistics and data analytics program. Alumni indicated the importance of writing in their early statistical careers and the importance of being able to write concisely to non-statistical audiences. These findings will shape writing instruction in statistics courses.

Barker and Elrod led a breakout session titled “Developing data storytellers using story builder in CODAP.” During this session, they led participants through using a plug-in developed for CODAP (a free, dynamic, online statistical software) called “Story Builder.” This plug-in allows users to create a digital story to showcase their exploration of a dataset. They also shared research they are doing using data stories collected from Elon students in a mathematics course for K-8 preservice teachers. Preliminary results show that this tool is useful in giving students a voice in communicating with data.

The USCOTS conference is held every other year, beginning first in 2005. This was the first time this conference was held in person since 2019 after the 2021 conference shifted online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a refreshing experience to hear from so many statistics educators around the country and get to spend time with colleagues in person. USCOTS is organized by the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (https://www.causeweb.org/cause/), which is “a  national organization whose mission is to support the advancement of undergraduate statistics education.”

Multiple faculty members received CATL Travel Grants to support their conference participation.