The inaugural UK Conference on Teaching Statistics (UKCOTS) took place last Thursday and Friday at Manchester. I didn’t know what to expect, but learned a whole lot and got inspired on what to do for my future module on data visualisation. I think I will try to implement (a subset of) the following things:
- Using ChatGPT to assist the in-person sessions;
- Design digital assessments to alleviate manual marking;
- Build on / borrow from existing materials, rather than writing everything from scratch;
- Use Quarto (for reproducibility & accessibility) and/or shiny (for interactivity);
- Have both Python and R to toggle between, to future-proof the module.
For one last time, I presented on the conversion of the teaching materials that I talked about, in a more polished way (finally). The feedback was pretty good, and one question from the audience was where the next marginal gains are going to be. My answer ties in to the above nicely: Quarto and Python. These will be my scholarship goals for the coming year. And hopefully I will get to present these in the next UKCOTS.