USCOTS 2023 - Call for Proposals


CAUSE has held the United States Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS) every other year since 2005. The 2023 USCOTS will be held on Thursday, June 1st - Saturday, June 3rd at the Penn Stater Conference Center in State College, Pennsylvania, with pre-conference workshops on Tuesday, May 30th – Thursday, June 1st. The conference theme is Communicating with/about Data.

USCOTS enables teachers of statistics to exchange ideas and discover how to improve their teaching. The conference features thought-provoking plenary sessions, interactive breakout sessions, informative posters-and-beyond sessions, and exhibitor technology demonstrations. Other highlights of the conference include opening and closing sessions comprised of inspiring five-minute presentations, a banquet with an after-dinner speaker and awards presentations, and birds-of-a-feather lunch discussions.  USCOTS 2023 will also feature a Research Satellite, to be held on May 31st and June 1st, that brings together researchers in statistics and data science education to promote and support projects of common interest.

We trust that you will find USCOTS to provide a very welcoming, active, and fun environment. We hope that you will meet new colleagues and renew friendships with peers who are united by a common desire to teach students effectively to the next generation of citizens and scholars.

Please consider submitting a proposal for an interactive breakout session, pre-conference workshop, "posters and beyond" contribution, or "birds of a feather" discussion topic. See below for links to submit proposals. Please address questions to program co-chairs Allan Rossman (arossman@calpoly.edu) or Kelly McConville (kmcconville@fas.harvard.edu), or to CAUSE director Dennis Pearl (dkp13@psu.edu).

 

Pre-conference Workshops

Pre-conference workshops provide an opportunity for more extensive study of a topic and more interaction among participants and presenters. Workshop durations range from a half-day to two days.

Proposal deadline: November 30th, 2022

Decisions are expected to go out by January 20th, 2023.

 

Breakout Sessions

Breakout sessions (75-minutes) provide interactive engagement among participants and presenters, on topics related directly to the conference theme of "Communicating with/about Data."

Proposal deadline: November 30th, 2022

Decisions are expected to go out by January 20th, 2023.

 Submit Breakout (Closed)

 

Posters & Beyond Sessions

The P&B session provides an opportunity for conference participants to display a “poster” of their ideas or provide a small demonstration of their favorite examples, activities, and teaching methods, the “beyond”. Abstracts for posters or beyond activities in the USCOTS Posters and Beyond session submitted before Sunday January 29, 2023 will receive feedback from the session organizers by February 20th. Final abstracts should be submitted by Sunday March 5, 2023. Abstracts submitted between January 30th and March 5th will be considered for selection, but will not receive feedback from the session organizers.

For “Posters,” provide a description of the activity and describe the teaching environment (e.g., type of institution, type of students, number of students per class), what takeaways viewers of the poster should expect, and whether the work has IRB approval if necessary. It is helpful, but not necessary, for those submitting posters to have some citations to support their work (included in the additional information section). For Poster submissions, please note that the committee will be looking for evidence for efficacy in the classroom.

Examples of evidence may include:

  • Institutional Course Evaluations
  • Pre/Post Surveys or Assessments
  • Focus Groups
  • Qualitative Feedback from Students
  • Measures of Student Learning

 

For “Beyond”, provide a description of the activity, demonstration, applet, etc., if possible and describe how you incorporate the demonstration, activity, or method into your classroom, and how you assess (formative or summative) the demonstration. Provide a brief description of the teaching environment (e.g., type of class, number of students, etc.) in which you use the activity. For Beyond submission, the committee will be looking at potential for efficacy, but formal evidence is not necessary.

Special Note: The Posters & Beyond Session at USCOTS 2023 and the CAUSE Research Satellite are not mutually exclusive; authors are welcome to submit the same poster proposal to both sessions (coming soon)

Final decisions on poster selections are expected to go out by Monday, March 27, 2023.

 

Birds-of-a-Feather Discussions

The highlights of the U.S. Conference on Teaching Statistics include interaction and discussion among statistics educators with similar interests. One mechanism for facilitating such conversations is a birds-of-a-feather discussion, in which people with similar interests gather over lunch to discuss a particular topic.

Proposal deadline: May 6th, 2023 | May 15th, 2023

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