TDG – A Web-based Statistics Tank for Teaching and Learning of Medical Statistics

Abstract

Teaching of medical statistics to medical and nursing students has always been a challenge. Traditional teaching of medical statistics often focuses on only operation of procedures without much emphasis on the use and interpretation of statistics in real-life research studies. This often leads to low learning motivation and retention of knowledge. Moreover, there has been lacking statistical resources tailored to medical and nursing students. Therefore, we aimed to develop an web-based platform, called Statistics Tank, to facilitate teaching and learning of statistics to students who need to acquire statistical skills in practice.

The Statistics Tank has been developed and evaluated in 24 students (21 females) studying the Master of Nursing programme. Of which, 91% indicated the webpage helped learning, 91% indicated the webpage help recalling terminology, 87% reported the webpage promoted greater student enthusiasm, and 87% had enhanced critical thinking skills. More importantly, 87% recommended the use of the Statistics Tank. Besides, students who need more use of statistics had increase in affect and reduction in perceived difficulty towards statistics.

The Statistics Tank is useful for teaching and learning of practical statistics. It serves as a platform to allow and encourage further development of new statistical resources.

Deliverables