eCOTS 2012

Michelle Everson served as the chair of the programming committee for the first Electronic Conference on Teaching Statistics (eCOTS).  This conference took place May 14-18, 2012, and all recorded sessions and materials from the conference will eventually be housed for public view on the CAUSEweb site (www.causeweb.org).  A total of 420 individuals registered for eCOTS, and registrants were able to take part in live break-out sessions early in the week on topics related to teaching the “modern student”, debating the “big ideas,” and technology resources for use in the statistics classroom.  Over 20 virtual posters (i.e., short five minute video presentations) were also on display for participants to review, and a discussion board was set up for each poster so conference attendees could leave questions and comments for the poster author(s).

On May 17th, Rebekah Isaak, Laura Le, and Laura Ziegler led a workshop about the CATALST curriculum for 30 educators, and a recording for this workshop will also soon be available on CAUSEweb.  The conference drew to a close with keynote presentations by Hans Rosling (who presented on using a fact-based world view to engage students) and Webster West (who discussed the impact of technology on the teaching of statistics).

eCOTS was definitely an energizing experience for all involved, and we are already looking ahead to eCOTS 2014!