Page 209 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS215 David Y. et al.
3.4 CPD Provision
Since the RSS has advocated CPD for teaching staff so strongly, it was
important to provide training and support in teaching the material and in the
use of R Studio. Several members of the teaching profession had tried to use
R themselves with little success, mainly due to time constraints and accessing
relevant learning materials. CPD events were again provided for teaching staff
on basic R skills using the online resource produced by the Q-Step interns.
This proved to be a successful way of training teachers to deliver the course
with confidence and enthusiasm. Some of the positive feedback from the CPD
training sessions included the following:
 ‘I was an attendee at the Higher Statistics event last week. I would just
like to thank you in terms of the delivery of unit information etc. Your
knowledge and experience oozed and it was a very enjoyable day.
Thank you.’
 ‘I particularly appreciated the way you gave real life experiences to
back up statements and statistical theories.’
 ‘The time in the labs was very productive. I hadn’t used Minitab since I
was at University and it had certainly changed from the Windows
Manager 3.1 version. Also changed days from looking up t tests and F
tests values from books, that I remember.’
 ‘RStudio, I had never used before so to have hands on experience was
very worthwhile. In terms of no cost this would be the one we would
choose (for obvious reasons).’
 ‘I just wanted to thank you for the presentation on Thursday. I found it
incredibly insightful and interesting. The demonstration on using R
studio with be invaluable, as I was previously using Excel, which was
unnecessarily cumbersome for some things.’
 ‘Going forward I will be “selling” the Stats Award to pupils as an
invaluable set of skills for those planning on doing any course at
university with a research element.’
 ‘Yesterday’s course was very enjoyable. Thank you very much. I came
away from yesterday’s course very excited about doing statistics. I
would like to consider doing more work on statistics at university level,
what would be the best pathway for this? Any information would be
appreciated.’

3.5 Assessment
The Higher Statistics Award is assessed in a variety of ways and can
include tasks and activities, for example:
 elements of practical assignments such as a project or investigation
 specific assessment tasks or activities
 discrete tests or question papers

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