Questions tell me a
lot about what students are thinking. The students do not seem to be aware that their questions
lead to what I consider a lecture. By this I mean that questions are
not answered alone, but are
elaborated as to the bigger issues
involved. The subject matter is alien to them and I need to hear them use
the words and concepts of statistics. (Sometimes I think it might have
something in common with teaching English as a foreign language.) I
can't know what students have internalized without hearing them say
things. For the same reason I use short answer rather
than multiple-choice RATs, because I need to see students write down what
they think statistics says.
I
always lecture just before a new chapter, about once a week. I try to hold
it to 25 minutes, but it often creeps up to 40. I think this bothers me
more than the students since I know that they won't remember much of the
material after the first 20 minutes.
Some
of my lectures are integrative, and unconnected to a single topic. They
occur after a few weeks and explain how statistics hangs together. They
aren't helpful until students have seen several kinds of tests and confidence
intervals, but scheduling them also depends on judging whether students are
ready to hear that life is easy because all statistical tests are really
variations on a theme, similarly for confidence intervals, and confidence
intervals are actually quite closely, formally, related to tests.
This completely contradicts their views when they start the class, so I think I
have to do it carefully.
The
students probably don't regard my short, introductory lectures or my
question-based lectures as lectures.
Regards,
David
Smith
David W. Smith, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Associate Professor,
Biostatistics
The University of Texas School of Public Health
San Antonio
Branch Campus
voice: (210) 562-5512
e-mail:
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