UK Conference on Teaching Statistics (UKCOTS)
The Department of Statistical Science at UCL has a reputation for excellent teaching, and in no small part this is down to having enthusiastic academic staff who enjoy training the next generation of statisticians. Many of us have been lucky enough to attend and present at international specialist conferences on teaching statistics, including in Argentina, Australia, Canada and Japan. We bring back what we learn from attending these conferences to UCL, including fruitful connections with educators from other institutions.
Heading to international conferences is often impractical. Though we have UK-based conferences such as Burwalls (teaching statistics to medical and allied health sciences) and CETL-MSOR (teaching maths, stats and operational research), we’re missing a specialist conference on Teaching Statistics in the UK emulating the set-ups in the US and Australia. An opportunity for statistics educators to meet and present their research – without having to travel too far (!) – is sorely needed.
Though my day job is very much at UCL, I also chair the Royal Statistical Society’s Teaching Statistics Section. I’m very excited that we are organizing the first UK Conference on Teaching Statistics, affectionally known as UKCOTS. Our first conference will be held at The University of Manchester on the 13-14th June 2024.
We’ve been amazed by the amount of interest that UKCOTS has already generated, in terms of the number of abstracts for presentations we received but also those who have offered their encouragement in putting together the conference. We are lucky to have the support of the Teaching Statistics journal, who will publish a special edition to showcase the best of statistics education research that was presented at the conference.
There will therefore be an emphasis on statistics education research at the first UKCOTS. The conference programme with include a plenary session that will gather experienced researchers in statistics education, with a variety of other sessions dedicated to developing researchers scheduled throughout the conference.
Everyone is welcome at UKCOTS, whether you teach statistics to specialist or non-specialist students, whether you’re highly experienced or just starting out, and whether your interest is in teaching in Higher Education, professional training, or statistical literacy in the general population. We hope to see you there in June!
