A one year recap on teaching statistcis to medical students: how can R and Quarto help?
Time and place: June 13 2024. Online
Slides for this talk can be accessed here.
About the topic
The Department of Biostatistics at University of Oslo offer statistics courses at different levels for medical students and PhD candidates with clinical backgrounds. The courses were traditionally taught with a focus on theory instead of data analysis, where SPSS and STATA were the tools of choice.
Since 2023 spring semester, we have been gradually transforming some of our statistics courses into R, using Quarto course websites and Carpentries style live-coding instruction. With new Quarto tools (such as WebR) we also added interactivity in the code blocks. So far we have transformed two courses with over 100 students who have almost no programming experience. We have observed impressive progress in the skill development, and received significantly more positive feedback when it comes to statistics education.
In this talk, I would like to share our experience on the successes and challenges throughout the process. Looking back, is it cost-effective? Definitely. Can we do better in the future? Almost surely. If you are also planning to adopt new technology in your teaching activities, join us to learn more about what you can do to make the transition happen!
Course website can be accessed here