Purpose
It is often said that in order to learn something well, you need to teach it to someone else. The purpose of this synthesis assignment is for you to showcase your learning in Biostatistics by selecting a subset of the course material and then explaining it - or developing a plan for explaining it - to peers who have not yet taken this course, using a mechanism that fits your skills and interests, as explained below under The Options.
- This assignment benefits your learning because it turns the tables and asks you to explain some key material to others.
- This assignment may also benefit your peers if it is picked up as a resource in the foundation-level biology courses or as a December winterim short-course.
- This assignment may also benefit your professor if it can be incorporated into future offerings of this course. :-)
Importantly, you get to choose both the topic(s) you want to explain and the medium through which you want to do that explaining.
[Note: Kathy includes a link to FAQs housed in the course Canvas Site]
Skills
This assignment should enable you to demonstrate your ability to explain statistics to non-statisticians, use statistical vocabulary accurately and with confidence, and practice specific skills from among those listed on our course objectives and learning goals page. These skills are essential not only to your success in this course, but also future work in biology or any other field that relates to data and statistics.
Exactly which skills you demonstrate will be determined by the course material you choose to explain, and the medium through which you do that explaining.
Depending on how you construct your project, you may practice your ability to:
- Prepare, interpret, and caption graphical summaries of data
- Calculate and interpret summary statistics for data
- Design data collection procedures that produce clear answers to specific questions
- Draw conclusions from data and (when appropriate) inferential statistics calculated from data
- Present these conclusions using the language of statistics
- Conduct one and two-sample t-procedures, simple linear regressions, or one-way analyses of
- variance
- Explain the reasoning behind one of these four approaches to non-statisticians
- Work with the statistical software JMP®
In addition, this project asks you to reflect on what you've learned, explicitly connect it to your past experiences in biology coursework, and then use clear, persuasive prose to explain why you chose a particular project topic and presentation approach.
Knowledge
This assignment provides the opportunity to cement your understanding of a particular topic or topic(s) that you find both interesting and important, and that you wish you had known sooner.
The Options
To complete the term, each Bio 29 student should choose one of the five possible synthesis assignments and submit the requested item(s) as described below and on the separate assignment pages. All submissions are due no later than 8:00 am on Sunday, 12 March 2023; draft submissions via Slack/email are welcome - see Tasks, below, for details.
There are two inter-related decisions to make:
- Determine the scope: do you want to work with a single topic in considerable detail, a few topics (3-5) in moderate detail, or work through the entire term to identify the most critical content at a very high level/with little detail?
- Determine the mode for presentation: video, podcast, infographic, or plans for a bootcamp.
Project Options
Note: Kathy included links to Canvas assignment pages for each of the options below in the description for her learners.
- One Topic
- Explain the single most important thing you've learned this quarter that you wish you had known when taking a particular Foundations-level course to a target audience of students currently enrolled in Biology 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, or 19.
- May be presented as a video, podcast, or 8.5"x11" infographic.
- 3-5 Topics
- Explain the 3-5 most important things you've learned this quarter that you wish you had known when designing research studies or analyzing the data collected in a particular Foundations-level course to a target audience of students currently enrolled in Biology 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, or 19.
- May be presented at a 8.5" by 14" infographic.
- Highlights of the entire term (you decide the level of detail for each)
- Develop a weekend-long statistics bootcamp that will involve both study design and analysis of the resulting data for a target audience of students entering a particular course or courses numbered from Biology 20-98 who have not yet taken Biology 29 or a "10" course.
Tasks
Note that this is a fairly complex project that requires pre-planning. The detailed instructions for each option are provided on the assignment pages; please consult with them early and often. We estimate that this assignment will take between 10-25 hours, depending on which option you select and how facile you already are with the technologies needed (if any) to accomplish that option.
To help organize your time, the workflow below outlines how I would work through this project. Your mileage may vary; I invite you to visit student hours on Friday afternoons, make an appointment to chat, or drop me a Slack message if you have questions or concerns.
- Choose among the various options for this assignment: decide how many topic(s) you would like to explain and how you would like to explain them. In making your choices, you may want to consider your existing experience with the various presentation modes and whether you'd need to learn any new skills needed for your selected option. Your available time and access to appropriate resources may narrow the list of choices. Suggested date for completion: 28 February.
- Review the requirements for your selected option and make sure you understand what is being asked. If you have questions, ask at class, on Slack, email, or in a student hour. Suggested date for completion: 2 March.
- Choose the focal content for your product, then write the bullet points or a narrative providing your rationale for why you choose this content – why is it the thing you want to invest time in teaching to others? Document your thought process as you are making your selection, so that it is easy to finalize later. Suggested date for completion: 5 March.
- Make sure you fully understand your focal content: review the relevant course notes, pre-class and during-class videos, textbook, and other tools; look back at your weekly reflections and your final expert group products; and talk to members of the teaching staff if you have any questions. Suggested date for completion: 7 March
- Create a draft of your project and seek feedback. Suggested date for completion: 9 March. Any assignment sent via Slack by 9 am on Saturday 10 March will get feedback by 4 pm that afternoon.
- Prepare your revised project and upload as stated in the assignment instructions: Due by Sunday 12 March at 8:00 am unless alternative arrangements have been made in advance.
[Note: Kathy shared examples of previous students' work to guide her current students. These cannot be shared here for privacy reasons.]
Honor Code
This assignment is worth 10% of your final course grade, and will be graded on a numeric scale as indicated on the rubric for each option. The intellectual component of this assignment must be completed independently, without consultation with other students, and should represent entirely your own work. Only publicly-
available resources may be consulted - this Canvas site, the textbook, or content accessed from a web browser. You may not receive assistance from artificial intelligence programs such as ChatGPT. (You may, however, ask for help recording the video if you choose option 1 and need a live cameraperson.)
(Draft) Criteria for Success (to be workshopped at class 21 February)
Successful end-of-term projects will:
- clearly demonstrate that the student has selected a subset of material appropriate for their selected option after careful consideration of the many potential options. It is not possible to re- teach the entire class using any of the five options, so tough choices will need to be made and documented;
- provide a compelling justification for the selection of content and delivery mechanism, given the student's own experience as a member of the target audience;
- demonstrate proficiency in the selected topic(s) by providing statistically-sound explanations, without factual errors;
- be crafted with the target audience's current knowledge level and expected statistical vocabulary in mind – i.e., not use jargon without defining it;
- invest in producing a high-quality product by writing clearly and effectively, producing aesthetically pleasing products that are ready to share with the target audience, and seeking feedback from the teaching staff; and
- include all required components
Excellent work - A and A- level - will meet all 6 of these criteria.
The most frequently made mistakes on this assignment in past years have included:
- Trying to explain too much - not making the hard choices - taking on too much in general. This is especially true for the bootcamp.
- Not providing an in-depth justification for the choices made as regards focal content
- Making a statistical error in the explanation (getting feedback on early drafts helps with this!)
- Assuming too much background knowledge from the audience, especially in vocabulary
- Not starting early enough and so producing an incomplete or unpolished draft instead of a complete and finished product
- Forgetting to include a required component - like the script for a video or podcast, or to justify how a particular component of the bootcamp will taught