Effective pedagogical strategies are needed to improve statistical literacy within health sciences education. This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a highly interactive two-week biostatistics short course using the flipped classroom model in the United States. The course was required for all students at the start of a…

Our study compared the performance of students enrolled in a graduate-level introductory biostatistics course in an online versus a traditional in-person learning environment at a school of public health in the United States. We extracted data for students enrolled in the course online and in person from 2013 to 2018. We compared average quiz and…

Biostatistics is a critical skill to physicians in an evidence-based medicine era, but teaching basic statistical concepts is challenging. Students often experience anxiety caused by the complexity of statistics and might express negative attitudes toward the subject. We aimed to analyze the effect of an introductory biostatistics course using…

Flipped classrooms have become an interesting alternative to traditional lecture-based courses throughout the undergraduate curriculum. In this article, we compare a flipped classroom approach to the traditional lecture-based approach to teaching introductory biostatistics to first-year graduate students in public health. The traditional course…

The recent rise in online learning in statistics has made it essential for instructors to teach effectively in that modality. In this retrospective, we reflect on how online course content was added to an introductory statistics course in a graduate public health program and how it was updated over time based on student feedback and instructor…

"Flipping" the classroom refers to a pedagogical approach in which students are first exposed to didactic content outside the classroom and then actively use class time to apply their newly attained knowledge. The idea of the flipped classroom is not new, but has grown in popularity in recent years as the necessary technology has…

Missing data can significantly influence results of epidemiological studies. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is a popular epidemiological dataset. We examined recent practices related to the prevalence and the reporting of the amount of missing data, the underlying mechanisms, and the methods used for handling missing…

A growth mindset emphasizes the malleability of intelligence. The purpose of this pilot study was to implement and evaluate a growth mindset intervention for graduate students. Participants were twenty graduate students recruited from an introductory public health biostatistics class. Students were assessed three times during one semester. At each…

Student evaluation is a key consideration for educational program administrators because program success depends on students' ability to demonstrate successful development of core competencies. Student evaluations must therefore be aligned with learning objectives and overall program goals. Graduate level educational programs typically incorporate…

Collaborative biostatistics is the creative application of statistical tools to biomedical problems. The relatively modest literature about the traits of effective collaborative biostatisticians focuses on four core competencies: (a) technical and analytical; (b) substance-matter knowledge; (c) communication; and (d) problem solving and problem…

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution of disease in human populations. This means that authentically teaching primary data collection in epidemiology is difficult as students cannot easily access suitable human populations. Using an action research methodology, this paper studied the use of a virtual human population (called "The…

Objective: In a Statistical Analysis System (SAS) coding interview, job applicants are typically presented with data management and data analysis problems and asked to solve them using the programming language of SAS. Interviewers not only assess technical competence, but also algorithm design and more generally how applicants approach computer…

Aim/Purpose: To investigate the effectiveness of incorporating wiki technology in an undergraduate biostatistics course for improving university students' collaborative learning, approaches to learning, and course performance. Methodology: During a three year longitudinal study, twenty-one and twenty-four undergraduate students were recruited by…

Objective: Our master's program in biostatistics requires a qualifying examination (QE). A curriculum review led us to question whether to replace a closed-book format with an open-book one. Our goal was to improve the QE. Methods: This is a case study and commentary, where we describe the evolution of the QE, both in its goals and its content.…

This study explored threshold concepts and areas of troublesome knowledge among students enrolled in a basic biostatistics course at the university level. The main area of troublesome knowledge among students was targeted by using technology to improve student learning. A total of 102 undergraduate students who responded to structured…