Webinar: Successful Approaches to Teaching Statistical Consulting

Recap of Spring 2023 Webinar, by Maria Ciarleglio, PhD, Yale School of Public Health.

The ASA Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences (TSHS) Spring 2023 webinar was a panel session looking at “Successful Approaches to Teaching Statistical Consulting.” This discussion was moderated by Dr. Julia Sharp of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Panelists included Dr. Emily Griffith of North Carolina State University, Dr. Alexandra Hanlon of Virginia Tech University, Dr. Ryan Peterson of the University of Colorado, and Dr. Emily Slade of the University of Kentucky.

In this webinar, we learned about the panelists’ experiences teaching statistical consulting and statistical practice courses at their institutions. Programs include both one-semester courses, two-semester course sequences, and a flipped classroom structure. Course enrollment ranges anywhere from 5-10 students to up to 45 students. Outside of the classroom, many institutions also provide students with informal training opportunities in statistical consulting such as consulting clinics or walk-in tutoring hours where students can help other students. We also learned about challenges and “lessons learned” including tips on how to maintain reasonable investigator expectations, panelist thoughts on the ideal student project group size, and how to make this type of course accessible to students with different levels of statistical knowledge.

Several of our panelists have created training resources for statistical consulting, collaboration, and communication. With support from the American Statistical Association Member Initiative program, Julia Sharp, Emily Griffith, and Megan Higgs developed a set of ten training videos for statistical consulting and collaboration. Ryan Peterson also maintains a repository of publicly-contributed and publicly-available training material containing many useful resources. The slide deck from the panel session is available here and provides a list of additional teaching resources. If you are interested in gaining valuable insight on how to support the training of the next generation of collaborative statisticians, I encourage you to watch the recording of this informative panel session. We welcome your comments or questions below.