Teaching Statistics in Psychology

Martin Le Voi

Statistics is hard to understand

• At least for psychologists…• Many psychology departments struggle with

explaining it• Students struggle• Every lecturer has a pet way of teaching• Is the problem with “one-size-fits-all”

How do you understand the “mean”

• The central tendency of a group of numbers• The expected value of a random variable• As an equation:

In pictures?

As a simulation?

Students learn in different ways

• Well, they claim some things are easier than others

• Some text books are easier than others• And it never seems unanimous• Certainly some concepts can be explained in

different ways

The Matching Hypothesis

• If you teach a student in concordance with their learning style, learning will be optimised

• But what is Learning Style?• And how do you teach to it?

Dodge the problem!

• Find and evaluate existing OERs for teaching statistics

• Classify by teaching approach• Invite students to self-assess by sampling

quality materials in different approaches• Automate the process!

Sample:

• http://psych.hanover.edu/aps/teaching.html#statistics• http://it.stlawu.edu/~rlock/tise98/onepage.html• http://www.stat.duke.edu/sites/java.html