Ruth Allen Email: [email protected]@lancs.ac.uk Website: // Postgraduate Statistics

Ruth Allen

Email: [email protected]: http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/psc

Postgraduate Statistics Centre

Lancaster University

Lancaster Postgraduate Statistics Centre

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/psc

HEFCE CETL initiative

Higher Education Funding Council of England’s (HEFCE) largest ever single funding initiative in teaching and learning

Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) initiative has two main aims: to reward excellent teaching practice to further invest in that practice so that CETL

funding delivers substantial benefits to students, teachers and institutions

A Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) Postgraduate Statistics

Lancaster CETL bid for a Postgraduate Statistics Centre Emphasised the belief that research quality and

research-led teaching is crucial in teaching PG statistics specialists

Well-trained Masters students provide a rich source of doctoral students and highly trained research statisticians

Counteract current shortage of young statisticians in the public and private sectors

£4.85m HEFCE grant, £1.05m from the university


I. Structure and function

Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

Lancaster Postgraduate Statistics Centre

5 core objectives1. To become a regional, national and international centre of excellence in the PG

training and development of statisticians

2. To motivate, encourage and provide quantitative inquiry-led training for students from other disciplines

3. To give Lancaster PG students enhanced quantitative skills which will influence their whole approach to research

4. To develop critical thinking in the use of statistics at a level appropriate for each group of users

5. To reward existing excellence in PG teaching

New PSC BuildingGround floor 50 seater lecture theatre Large computer room Flexible teaching/IT room Access Grid room

First floor Open plan learning zone Consultancy Suite Meeting room MSc student room/library 10 Offices

PSC Funded Staff Director Deputy Director PSC Secretary Facilitator/Research Associate 3 indefinite lecturers 3 fixed term lecturers 2 Visiting Fellows 3 Research Associates Web Officer Part-time Computer Technician


II. Activities and achievements to date

Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

1. To extend and enhance existing opportunities for PG statistics students

2. To expand our innovative style of inquiry-led statistics teaching into other disciplines

3. To develop innovative biomedical courses within the new medical school

4. To develop collaborations with other institutions to provide specialist training

5. To provide motivational and focussed PG training workshops in a range of disciplines

6. To instigate a Master Class programme in emerging substantive areas with visiting experts

7. To develop a visiting fellow scheme

8. To expand the use of web-based teaching, video material and on-line datasets

9. To develop teaching excellence in our new statistics lecturers

10. To further enhance and reward the teaching excellence of all staff

Ten Action Points

1. To extend and enhance existing opportunities for PG statistics students

MSc in Statistics with pathways (from 2008/09) in Medical Statistics Pharmaceutical Statistics Environmental Statistics

MSc in Applied Social Statistics (from 2010) Crime and Forensic Statistics Health Research Teaching Statistics up to pre-university level

MRes in Applied Social Statistics (from 2006/07) PhD Programme – new DTC (from 2010) Short course programme (expanded)


2. To expand our innovative style of inquiry-led statistics teaching into other disciplines

MSc in Quantitative Finance (from 2010) Faculty Research Training programmes for PhD

students Service courses with new/expanded modules:

Management Science Psychology Biology Sociology Criminology

Restructured consultancy service; advertising and outreach


3. To develop innovative biomedical courses within the new Medical School

Progress delayed because of restructuring of Dept of Medical Education, Institute of Health Research and part of Biological Sciences into a new School of Health and Medicine

New MSc in Epidemiology planned - awaiting new Lecturer in Epidemiology

Introductory courses for Manchester Medical Students at Royal Preston Hospital



4. To develop collaborations with other institutions to provide specialist training Member of several national training consortiums:

ESRC National Centre for Research Methods ESRC Regional Training Centre National Taught Course Centre in OR (NATCOR) Academy for PhD Training in Statistics (APTS) Mathematical Access Grid Instruction and Collaboration Consortium

(MAGIC) Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education RSS conference sessions on Teaching Stats in HE Hosted CETL-MSOR conference 2008 Utrecht University – psychometrics MPS – pharmaceutical statistics courses


5. To provide motivational and focussed PG training workshops in a range of disciplines

Forensic Science Programme Statistics for Anthropologists (Dundee, Sept 2007) Statistical Human Identification (Dundee, Mar 2007) Forensic Evidence Evaluation (Cracow, June 2007) Quantifying Forensic Evidence (Lancaster , Sept 2009)

RSS/EPSRC Graduate Training Programme Event History Analysis and Introduction to Wavelet Analysis

Statistical Extremes meeting Genomics – new distance learning course Geospatial software workshop (very popular)


6. To instigate a Master Class programme in emerging substantive areas with visiting experts User-interfaces and graphics in R (Adrian Bowman, Richard Newton,

April 2008) Categorical/ordinal data analysis (Alan Agresti, Sept 2008)

Latent class and latent transition analysis (Linda Collins, Sept 2008)

Handling missing data (James Carpenter Mar 2009)

Modern smoothing methods: GAMLSS and P-splines in action (Mikis Stasinopoulos, Robert Rigby, Paul Eilers, Nov 2009)

Multivariate data analysis for environmental ecologists (Michael Greenacre, Raul Primicerio, Mar 2010)

Methods for sensitive questions (Peter van der Heijden, April 2010)

Latent variable and growth curve modelling (tbc, 2010)

Advanced R (tbc, June 2010)


7. To develop a visiting fellow scheme

Two visiting lecturers from Federal University of Parana in Curitiba, Brazil 2006

Visiting lecturer from Tehran University 2008 Visiting lecturer from Sri Lanka 2009 Visiting fellow from Health and Safety

Executive 2009/10 Visiting fellow from Utrecht University 2009/10 Visiting fellow from RSS CSE 2010


8. To expand the use of web-based teaching, video material and on-line datasets

On-line e-learning courses (http://psc.maths.lancs.ac.uk/e-learning/)

Collaborations Statistical Instruction Modules with Purposeful Learning Emphasis

(SIMPLE) (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/simplevle) Centre of e-Science – online resources for Sabre 5

(http://www.sabre.lancs.ac.uk/short_course.html)

Use of LUVLE for short courses & evaluation Computer-aided assessment (Questionmark Perception) Podcasting and Personal Response System ePDP – new miniproject on prep for employment On-line booking & payment system for short courses (2008)

http://psc.maths.lancs.ac.uk/e-learning/


9. To develop teaching excellence in our new statistics lecturers

Mentoring of new staff Peer review of lectures with constructive feedback Annual module review process Lancaster Certificate of Academic Practice MSOR Statistics Lecturer Training Course Training for lecturers in the use of flexible learning

space for blended learning (new building) CETL T&L seminar series Host University Maths Forum


10. To further enhance and reward the teaching excellence of all staff

Staff reward is an important part of the HEFCE remit Improved working environment - new building Teaching innovation points can be awarded as part of dept

workload allocation Teaching innovation integrated into staff appraisals Funds for Continuing Professional Development Small grants to improve existing courses IT support for creating web-based teaching material and

online datasets Mini project scheme - 13 projects funded (max £5k each)

Conclusion There is a shortage of professional

statisticians – need to train the statisticians of tomorrow

PGT student numbers are increasing but we need a fresh approach tailored to the current climate

Continuing Professional Development in statistics is crucial for building and supporting STEM education

Need to increase recognition of importance of statistics in HE and encourage new innovation in teaching statistics in HE

Documents

Ruth Allen Email: [email protected]@lancs.ac.uk Website: // Postgraduate Statistics