Integrating Technology in a Biostatistics Course at Florida International University

Abstract

A special undergraduate program for selected biology majors at Florida International University (FIU) was inaugurated in the fall of 2007. This program identified as QBIC, an acronym for “Quantifying Biology in the Classroom”, emphasizes the use of mathematics and statistics for analyses of biological/biomedical data. The present author was the designated instructor for the Statistics I course. This first-level Biostatistics course was implemented by integrating PowerPoint, statistical software (SPSS), and data from biological/biomedical studies. The course started in August 2008 during QBIC students’ sophomore year. The most common approach to teaching Statistics consists of using a board for lectures, a textbook as a reference, and supplementary material posted on a website. Two technology additions to this traditional approach were incorporated in this course: the daily use of PowerPoint presentations for lectures, and SPSS for data computations and analyses. PowerPoint presentations and SPSS assignments were developed by the instructor for this course. Each student had access to a desktop personal computer and real data from the current health sciences were included in numerous examples and exercises. While using this teaching-learning model QBIC students were able to learn more quickly and effectively. This was evidenced by the number of extra topics covered, the acquired knowledge of statistical software, and the overall students’ performance. The discussion included in this paper suggests that the addition of technology resources and real data from biological/biomedical studies provides a more effective teaching-learning model for a first-level Biostatistics course at college.