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
(210)
562-5512