Teaching Projects

The Postgraduate Statistics Centre provides tailored courses in Statistics for various departments across the university and is dedicated to improving the understanding and use of Statistics. The Centre is also committed to improving the practice of Statistics teaching by supporting innovative projects in learning, teaching, assessment technologies and methods.

The Centre has funded a number of Teaching Projects to enable staff to experiment with innovative ideas in teaching and learning postgraduate statistics.

More details about our Teaching Projects

The Centre organises Teaching and Learning Seminars about innovative teaching methods and support for teaching practice throughout the academic year.

The Use of Emerging Technology

As part of the Centre's commitment to improving teaching practice we are investigating a number of new and emerging technologies such as:

• Podcasting
  The Centre is equipped with podcasting facilities allowing lecturers to make audio and video from their classes available over the internet. This empowers students by enabling them to revise and review material covered in lectures from a variety of devices such as computers, mobile phones and iPods at a time of their convenience. View our Videos and Podcasts site or search for us in the iTunes Podcast Directory under postgraduate statistics.
• Online and Computer Aided Assessment
  The use of online worksheets, tests and feedback forms using Questionmark Perception has been trialled in several departments at Lancaster University, including statistics. Please contact the university representative for more information on Perception, or see some examples of worksheets converted to pdf.
• Personal Response Systems
  Using Personal Response Systems is a fun way to break up the monotony of traditional lectures. These are *“gameshow buzzer”* -style devices that allow the lecture to pose questions that the students can then vote on. This leads to more interactive and involving lectures; and since students can vote anonymously they are able to contribute without fear of making a mistake as well as to compare their understanding with their peers. Watch Dr Andrew Titman's seminar about his use of Personal Response Systems.
• Online Tutorials for Statistical Software.
  Increasingly, Statistics is taught using sophisticated software, the use of which is often complex and time consuming to teach. The development and use of animated online tutorials on how to use these software packages is an effective way of tutoring students on and off campus. Here are some examples in Macromedia Flash. The Centre is also involved with SIMPLE (Statistics Instruction Modules with Purposeful Learning Emphasis). SIMPLE is a project to develop better methods of teaching and learning for social scientists using an intelligent, computer-based system. View more details on the SIMPLE website.