eCOTS 2016 Draws 600

The third biennial Electronic Conference on Teaching Statistics (eCOTS), hosted by the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE), took place online May 16–20 with the theme “Changing with Technology.” With topics including teaching a flipped or blended course, teaching simulation-based inference, teaching with R/RStudio, teaching with technology, and teaching data science, the conference drew nearly 600 registrants.

The conference included an extensive program, consisting of the following:

• Keynote addresses by Andrew Gelman on introductory statistics and Michael Jordan on a data science class for first-year students
• Three two-hour workshops disseminating National Science Foundation–funded projects on passion-driven statistics, simulation-based inference, and flipping the introductory statistics course
• Five one-hour panel discussions about hot topics in statistics education related to technology, including an invited panel about teaching data science with Nick Horton, Jeff Leek, Deb Nolan, and Hunter Glanz and an invited panel about teaching with simulation-based inference with Nicola Justice, Robin Lock, Allan Rossman, and Chris Wild
• Eighteen half-hour breakout sessions
• Thirty-four virtual posters (five-minute videos) about a variety of topics
• Eight birds-of-a-feather small-group open discussions

All conference material was recorded and is publicly available for free viewing. The recordings from eCOTS 2014 and 2012 also are available online for free viewing.

The conference also included, for the first time, eight regional face-to-face mini-conferences happening at different locations throughout the country: Southern California, Southern Florida, Northern Kentucky, Middle Tennessee, Northern Florida, Central Ohio, Boston, and Northern Georgia. The companion conferences were designed to foster regional statistics education communities and leverage and integrate with the online programming of eCOTS. All reported successful meetings and new collaborations.

eCOTS occurs in May of even-numbered years—alternating with its face-to-face sister conference, USCOTS (the United States Conference on Teaching Statistics), in May of odd-numbered years. Like eCOTS, USCOTS focuses on undergraduate statistics education and is hosted by CAUSE. Save the date now for USCOTS 2017, which will take place at the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center in State College, Pennsylvania, May 18–20, with the theme “Show Me the Data!”