Teaching Introductory Statistics with DataCamp

Abstract

We designed a sequence of courses for the DataCamp online learning platform that approximates the content of a typical introductory statistics course. We discuss the design and implementation of these courses and illustrate how they can be successfully integrated into a brick-and-mortar class. We reflect on the process of creating content for online consumers, ruminate on the pedagogical considerations we faced, and describe an R package for statistical inference that became a by-product of this development process. We discuss the pros and cons of creating the course sequence and express our view that some aspects were particularly problematic. The issues raised should be relevant to nearly all statistics instructors. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum
• Online learning
• Pedagogy
• R

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Chester Ismay, Evgeni Chasnovski, and numerous others for their contributions to infer.

Disclaimer

This work was not supported by any grant, although the authors do receive royalties from DataCamp.

Notes

1 A ninth course, Experimental Designin R taught by Kaelen Medeiros, was subsequently added by DataCamp to the sequence.

2 As of January 2019, it appears as though DataCamp no longer supports LMS integration.

3 One could replace the stat argument to calculate() with stat =“Chisq” to perform a permuted chi-squared test (which yields a very similar result in this case).

4 An alternative for new content is the learnr package, which enables interactive tutorials in R Markdown (Schloerke, Allaire, and Borges 2019).

5 Our already damaged relationship with DataCamp was thrown into grave peril by the sexual misconduct perpetrated by DataCamp CEO Jon Cornelissen against one of our colleagues, and the subsequent poor response from DataCamp (Alba 2019). We were members of the group of more than 100 instructors who pushed DataCamp for an appropriate response, and spent time and effort working with that group to try and repair a rapidly deteriorating relationship. We are heartened by the strength, passion, and solidarity of the instructor community in their support of the victim. In seeking to be part of a solution, one of us joined the DataCamp Instructor Advisory Board.