2023 ILLOWA Keynote Speaker
Professor, Avila University
Kansas City, MO
Director of the Collaborative Replication Education Project (CREP)
Recipient of a 2022 NSF Grant through the Division of Undergraduate Education
Title of Talk: Things That Surprise My Students
Abstract
Throughout the past couple of decades, I have taught some courses in research methods and statistics. Students might describe these as “tough,” “boring,” or “awful” when they register, but ideally there is some sort of magic that happens in the class that elevates these courses up to categories like “okay,” “useful,” or “not my least favorite thing” for these students. Most of them do not leave my class and immediately spend all day doing research or dreaming about doing research, but I do hope that they achieve some of my informal goals for them, such as “understand that it’s okay to hate it sometimes.” In this talk, I will discuss some of these goals, and some things I have told my students throughout the years that surprise them and make them feel more confident in their research skin. It is my hope that you will leave this talk with a sense that it was not awful.
