Yesterday's meeting of the American Statistical Association, Twin Cities Chapter was focused on a subject very dear to us Catalysts: statistics education! Milo Schield of Augsburg College opened the evening by discussing "Two Big Ideas for Teaching Big Data", reflecting on the importance of causation and confounding especially in a world of data-driven decision making where the data is observational, and every association is "statistically significant."
Our Michelle Everson then spoke about the lessons she's learned from her ten years of online statistics instruction. How do you foster active learning in the online classroom? How do you keep the work manageable? How involved should you be in discussion? As someone constantly experimenting and critiquing her own techniques, Dr. Everson didn't present final answers to these questions, but she did share her accumulated wisdom from her online journey:
