1. Building Confident Engaged Researchers Through Active Partnership and Problem Based Learning
Chris Kent, Jess Fielding, & Peter Allen
15 June 2018

2. The problem Students don’t like statistics
Students have significant levels of stats-anxiety:
Disengagement
Not prepared for independent project work
Students (165) want small group practical work
Want more continuous, low-risk, assessments, and formative feedback
Research methods and statistics comprise 30% of BSc
Impact on NSS/TEF etc

3. The project Objectives:
Enable students to programme and conduct their own experiments within TB1
Provide rolling formative feedback on knowledge and understanding
Enable effective small-group peer support via ‘homework clubs’
Embed a culture of participation in lectures via interactive smart-phone response systems (SRS)

4. The project
Stage 1: Collate set of weekly tests and practice tests Secure funding for iClicker Stage 2: Develop teaching material for small group programming Run Group 1 through material Stage 3: Evaluate and redesign material Run Group 2 through material Stage 4: Evaluate and deploy!

5. The outcomes Materials designed (weekly tests and teaching material)
Students engaged and (more) confident, enjoyed problem based active group work
Took to programming well and understood importance
Working in groups, designing own experiments, and programming worked well
“…enjoyable and a total buzz when it worked”
“…the content and structure were fantastic. I would be great to have this course run for longer an extend to different levels of coding knowledge”
“…overall the course has been a good introduction into building psychological experiments.”

6. The outcomes
Some teething issues with R Many ‘technical issues’ due to time constraints and multiple platforms with installation issues Ready to role out Oct 2018… Following weeks will build on this platform to give fuller understanding and experience of research cycle

7. The future
Role out 2018 for Year 1 (continue evaluation to compare with current cohort) Role out Year New TEALS development!