Knashawn H. Morales

In my field, biostatistics, I face two key challenges that are relevant for many faculty teaching now: teaching students who are anxious about learning and teaching students who have to miss class for one reason or another. Students who are apprehensive about learning a subject, particularly those without a quantitative background or who have not been exposed to quantitative topics in some time, appear to lack confidence and, as a result, can be less engaged in lectures. Additionally, it can be a challenge to teach students with demanding careers who often need to take as much as a few weeks off for their other responsibilities. My challenge as an instructor for both kinds of students is to make sure every student walks away with a firm grasp of the material, and I’ve found a similar solution for both types of students. I believe that taking the time to make small adjustments can create an environment that facilitates better engagement, relieves anxiety, and builds confidence while allowing the student to manage competing demands. Here I share a few basic thoughts on how I approach these challenges. Dr. Amrit Thapa provides complementary tips in “Methods to Demystify Methods” (Almanac October 26, 2021), which I found to be very insightful and resonated with my teaching approach. 

I am currently faculty in the department of biostatistics, epidemiology and informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine and member of the graduate group in epidemiology and biostatistics. My teaching experience began with introductory statistical methods and applications courses for graduate students pursuing a degree in biostatistics. Since then, my teaching role has expanded to include non-statistical degree learners. Over the past seven years, I have taught for the Clinical Epidemiology Certificate Program and the Master of Science in Health Policy Research Program. I teach standard semester courses as well as shortened summer period courses. These introductory courses often have no prerequisite, which means the group of students have varying levels of prior mathematics/statistical training, from no recent exposure to mathematics to several recent courses in statistics. Students in these classes come from a variety of backgrounds including physicians and public health practitioners, as well as research scientists with an interest in clinical research. Students often differ from traditional full-time biostatistics students, not only in their varied background, but they take classes alongside simultaneous demands of maintaining professional and personal responsibilities. Students in these situations may have a two-week absence from class to prepare for medical board exams or need to travel to give a lecture at a professional conference. 

My approach to accommodating busy students begins with organization of course materials. In preparation for virtual teaching for the first time during the spring semester of 2021, I joined the Faculty Course Building Club led by Sherri Place of the Penn Online Learning Initiative. The club was very helpful in providing strategies for success and tools for the virtual environment. Before the pandemic and forced virtual classes, I would use Canvas as a simple file folder system without putting much thought into the layout or organization. By taking advantage of the application’s features (such as modules, pages, and surveys), I removed clutter from the students’ view of Canvas while at the same time disabling menu options or attributes that I did not need (and they didn’t need to see). Additionally, I used the rich content editor to create pages with clear sections marked by larger headings. I designed a home page that contained all of the relevant information for the course with embedded hyperlinks to other pages and materials. I divided the semester into eight topical sections and presented each of them in modules. Each module included the reading assignments (required and supplemental), lecture notes, homework assignments, and surveys. The module would be made available on the home page approximately a week prior to starting each new topic to further reduce clutter on the courses home page. By these small changes, I was able to make course materials easily accessible, relieving some of the stress for students who felt less confident and for those students who needed to be away. 

I seek to make statistics accessible to everyone, no matter their background. I regularly ask for student feedback through anonymous surveys at the end of each section via Canvas, that count towards the class participation grade. I ask students to “note one thing learned from the lectures” and “note one thing you did not understand from the lectures.” Then I organize student answers into themes and share those with the class at the beginning of the next lecture. I also provide a review which gives students an opportunity to raise questions in a comfortable manner and allows for dynamic assessment of the students’ understanding of topics. Students’ confidence is boosted when they see that other students have the same questions and when everyone gets to hear the answer. These sessions also allowed me to make sure no one was left behind, even when students couldn’t come to class. 

Finally, fostering a welcoming and respectful environment is important in any classroom. What I have taken away from webinars sponsored by statistical professional societies on creating a sense of belonging is that small steps can go a long way toward incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion in courses. Rather than revamping an entire course, smaller, more intentional steps—such as using inclusive language in the syllabus or swapping a few existing reading materials to include more diverse authors—can send a message to all students. I also gave students a group project instead of a final exam, which offered diversity in the type of assessments and also relieved anxiety around the demands of the course. I assigned groups of 4-5 students to use an existing dataset to develop research questions and hypotheses, to perform a statistical analysis to test the hypotheses, and to present the study to the class. There were also small milestone assignments during the semester and time for each group to share their progress and challenges. The datasets that I selected consisted of diverse and timely topics including: drug use among young adults; health and well-being of lesbians, gay men, and bisexual individuals; fatal shootings by police in the U.S.; and college students coping with COVID-19. The discussions around the projects were thought provoking, engaging, and created a sense of community among the students. 

In summary, my role is to communicate a fundamental understanding of statistics needed to conduct clinical research and communicate effectively with statisticians. Anxiety related to a lack of confidence in approaching the subject as well as competing demands can be eased by making sure the course materials are organized, the topics are accessible, and the environment is welcoming. 

Knashawn H. Morales is associate professor of biostatistics in the department of biostatistics, epidemiology, and informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine. 

This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching. 

See https://almanac.upenn.edu/talk-about-teaching-and-learning-archive for previous essays.