Promising Practices

My main interaction with students has been during office hours when I get the opportunity to work individually with many of them. In my experience, students are often intimidated by statistical language. While I may not have an awareness of a particular student’s preferred learning style, I’ve found from working with a variety of different individuals that pictorial representations of abstract terms appears more meaningful to them.

Once students gain that basic understanding, I try to provide additional examples in which they can feel more confident in their ability to master the material. I also emphasize the importance of inventing their own research studies in their area of interest. This requires the student to integrate various higher order thinking skills, which hopefully leads to a better understanding of the concepts. More importantly, they can transfer classroom knowledge into real world applications.