These are all pertinent comments from several participants. I will use
several of them.
Don't misunderstand the quantity of the dissatisfied. There are always a
few severely dissatisfied students; my lifetime experience is that this
is on the order of 10%, more or less. If they have other options, as at
large universities, they can opt out and everyone is probably better
off. This isn't as feasible when a course is required, the enrollment is
small, and students have selected to be on a tight schedule.
We statisticians must always remember that students do not take
statistics last because they are saving it for dessert. Total strangers
feel free to tell me that statistics was the worst course they ever
took. I was told that only about a week ago, when I went to the hospital
for procedure, by the staff member who was leading me from the admitting
office to the ward. It was clear that my being a statistician made her
uncomfortable after she asked me and what I do and I told her. A much
smaller number of strangers have told me that they enjoyed their
statistics course a great deal. So few that this always surprises me.
This is just part of our American culture.
Most students come to any course looking for certainty. In college
statistics this usually means they want the course to look pretty much,
or exactly, like high school math. (No criticism here of high school
math teachers. They are heroes, if not always successful.)
When students find that the expectations in college are greater, the
demands are higher, and the contact time is less, many do not like it.
This goes for any subject, not just mine.
TBL assists me in showing people that there is a great deal to learn,
that what they have to learn is not just simple formulas and toy
problems with standard, if frustrating, solutions. Biostatistics is
about the large issues of the day. It is about the assessment of
population health for the purpose of policy formation, both locally and
nationally. It's about widespread screening for prostate cancer, which
we do in America and isn't done in Europe. It's about whether to provide
HPV vaccines to women, at what age, and why don't we offer it to or
require it of teenage boys as well as teenage girls when the disease to
be prevented, cervical cancer, is a disease of older women. (The last
time I checked the clinical trial in boys was still ongoing. The results
should be out soon. Personally, I recommend this vaccination. It can
save your child's life even if you are not around to see it happen. I
believe that the sooner it is available for boys, the better it will be
for all our children.) Biostatistics is about providing automatic
defibrillators in public places, do they really save any lives, and is
it worth the cost? It is about whether we can afford Social Security and
Medicare at all. Etc, etc. These questions do not have easy answers, but
biostatistics enlightens them all.
This is what is exciting and interesting. I will never let the few
students who merely want to check off a box with as little effort as
possible define my course.
Most students, after more or less time and effort, come to realize that
they can learn something useful and interesting and even enjoy part of
the course. TBL is at the center of this kind of realization.
Students can't, tacitly and collectively, just turn off the lecturer,
who they already know is wrong before they start class simply because a
class that uses TBL to open up complex ideas doesn't give them
guaranteed formulas for success. They have to engage with others, peers,
whose ideas about statistics are also developing at different rates, to
address problems with increasing degrees of sophistication and
complexity. (I have to give them those kinds of problems, since they are
not in the text books.) But students have to learn the mechanics of
solving textbook problems as well. When they work with a group, they can
see that others are finding understanding as well as grasping the
mechanics of problem solving. This observation of others being
successful is an important element of TBL, in my experience.
Regards,
David Smith
David W. Smith, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Biostatistics Division
San Antonio Campus
University of Texas School of Public Health
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(210) 562-5512
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