Teaching applied statisticians to be effective statistical collaborators, particularly in challenging situations, can be difficult. However, in large or online classroom settings—where it can be challenging to conduct mock meetings—students can benefit from videos and corresponding discussion questions.
With support from the American Statistical Association’s member initiatives program, Julia Sharp, Megan Higgs, and Emily Griffith—with the help of Ann Hess—created a set of 10 short videos covering challenging and salient topics of communication for collaborative statisticians. The videos are freely available online and cover subjects including communication and planning, aspects of statistical inference, and professional ethics. These topics were identified from collaborating statisticians’ personal experiences, with input from graduate students in statistics working as statistical collaborators.
The 10 videos, along with written scripts and discussion questions, are meant to be used as a basis for meaningful discussion and reflection in courses teaching statistical collaboration. The scenarios portray realistic situations commonly encountered by practicing applied statisticians. Students are provided a unique experience that allows them to reflect on common challenges and possible ways to respond before the situations arise for them in practice. The goal is to improve communication skills and confidence in handling difficult situations.
The videos are not meant to provide straightforward “how-to” instruction, but instead to motivate thoughtful discussion. Toward this goal, the scenarios provide context and points for further dialogue among students, rather than depicting the most effective ways to deal with the challenges presented. For each scenario, there are many reasonable strategies and directions the conversation could have gone depending on the individuals involved, as well as their roles and expectations. Follow-up discussions can be tailored to fit a variety of contexts.
The written script accompanying each video can be used for reference during a discussion or to facilitate student role-playing (in addition to or instead of watching the videos). Two discussion questions or prompts are presented at the end of each video, with additional questions available in the materials accompanying each video. The additional questions add further context to the scenarios portrayed in the videos and scripts and support students and instructors in extending the conversation to topics not explicitly included in the videos. Instructors are encouraged to read through all questions beforehand and choose those that fit their classes best.
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