TRANSFORM
TRANSFORM: Teaching Resources for Applying Numeracy and Statistics for Objective Research Methods
An education research and development project that aims to create and evaluate a set nine brief video learning resources that are informed by primary research into what statistical concepts students struggle with, and what kind of videos are most effective in helping them to understand those concepts.
The project is a joint venture between the University of Birmingham and University of Nottingham in the U.K., and is funded by IN PARTNERSHIP: The Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham. Our videos will augment an existing online e-learning resources for teaching statistics and research methods across any discipline at undergraduate or postgraduate levels.
In June 2019, we hosted a joint Nottingham-Birmingham one-day Conference for networking and sharing best practice in statistics teaching and learning at both universities. Please see our TRANSFORM Conference page for more details.
Our resource development activity to date:
The existing set of learning resources are in the process of being updated to HTML5 format. This will ensure that they continue to be accessible to students, and is a technical improvement over the previous format.
New learning resources are being created: In September 2018 the project team scripted a set of short video resources. They were filmed at the University of Nottingham's studios on the King's Meadow Campus, by The University's Learning Content Team. Pre-release versions of the videos were evaluated by students during the summer of 2019, and once they have been professionally produced, they will be made available for staff and students of both institutions.
This page also features curated links to high-quality learning resources across the UK that are freely available for anyone to use (scroll down the page to see them).
Our research activity to date:
Two Staff Workshops: One at the University of Nottingham on the 27th of March 2018, and another at the University of Birmingham on the 29th of March 2018. During each event, 14 participants from several academic disciplines shared in-depth ideas, approaches and practices that they have found to help students to grasp difficult statistical and research methods concepts.
Ten Student Focus groups: During 2018, focus groups were conducted at the University of Nottingam, and five at the University of Birmingham. Participants from several academic disciplines shared their in-depth experiences of learning to grasp difficult statistical and research methods concepts.
A student Survey: During 2018 and 2019, a large number of students across academic disciplines at the univeristies of Birmingham and Nottingham were asked a series of questions about their experiences of learning satatistics and research methods.
An evaluation of the new videos created during the project: In the summer of 2019, nine focus groups were conducted at the University of Birmingham where students watched the new videos and explored their reactions to them.
Other UK statistics learning resources:
Links to useful statistics learning resources available to all from UK universities beyond the Birmingham-Nottingham Partnership
FOR STUDENTS:
SIGMA (Coventry University) guides to statistical tests and SPSS
Statstutor (SIGMA Network, UK) statistics learning resources
Core Statistics for students (Newcastle University)
Statistics for SportEx (Will Hopkins, Sportsci.org)
SOFTWARE GUIDES:
SPSS beginners' guides (SPSS Website)
SPSS tutorials (Coursera)
R for statistics tutorials (Statmethods.net)
R tutorials for Excel users
R tutorials (Coursera)
Linkedin Learning for University of Birmingham staff and students: Activate your profile at LinkedIn Learning using your University email address (omitting the word 'student') and University password. After this, you can log directly into the Linkedin Learning site.
FOR TUTORS:
SIGMA national UK network for excellence in mathematics and statistics support
SIGMA JISCMAIL discussion list
SIGMA Newsletters
MSOR: Maths Stats and Operational Research Network UK
Journal of the International Association for Statistical Education
Journal of Statistics Education (international)
Participate in the project
We invite all lecturers and staff at the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham who teach statistics to get involved. We hope to understand students’ and tutors’ experiences of teaching & learning statistics. We will build what we learn into free reusable e-learning resources.
We are also hosted a joint Nottingham-Birmingham one-day Conference in June 2019. Please see our TRANSFORM Conference page for more details.
CONTACT US
The Birmingham Team:
The Nottingham Team: