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1. Building students statistical skills using Passion-Driven Statistics “Boot Camp” Model

   Flaming, K. R.; Gallagher, K. M.; Dierker, L. (January 2021, A compendium of conference presentations on teaching)

   Scherschel, H.; Rudmann, D.S. (Ed.)

   The COVID-19 pandemic has gifted us a pivot point, an opportunity, in which we can consider ways to do things differently than we have "always" done them. Traditionally, students view statistics as an obstacle to overcome, rather than an opportunity to pursue their own interests and passions. The Passion-Driven Statistics curriculum challenges this viewpoint by exposing students to a meaningful and powerful data analysis experience during a 3-day "boot camp" or as a short project over a few weeks. This provides major student outcomes (e.g., an empirical poster presentation) with minor faculty investment (e.g., time, technology). Our model can be quickly personalized to meet the needs of you and your students, which is especially important during moments of an unexpected pivot. In addition to face-to-face, the outcomes can be met in a fully online, remote, or hybrid environment, making this model suitable for use in a variety of contexts. The "boot camp" model could serve as a way for your student lab members to gain research experience, skill-building workshop for your psychology club students, or project for a content-based course. This NSF-funded (DUE #1820766) model is a multidisciplinary, project-based curriculum that supports students in conducting original research, asking original questions, and communicating methods and results using the language of statistics. The course attracts higher rates of under-represented minority (URM) students compared to a traditional math statistics course (Dierker et al., 2015) and higher rates of female and URM students compared to an introductory programming course (Cooper & Dierker, 2017). Students reported the course more rewarding, were more likely to accomplish more than expected, found the course more useful than other courses, increased confidence in working with data, increased interest in pursuing advanced statistics courses, and received more individualized support than other courses (Dierker et al., 2018). 

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2. Participant perspectives on effective elements and impacts of climate change adaptation workshops in the United States

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cliser.2023.100436  

   O'Brien, Caleb; Stern, Marc J; Brousseau, Jennifer J; Hansen, Lara J; Hull, R Bruce (January 2024, Climate Services)

   Communities in the United States are increasingly relying on place-based climate adaptation workshops to aid attempts to prepare for—and cope with—climate change, but there is limited empirical evidence about what participants believe these workshops can achieve and what elements they find most valuable. To begin addressing this gap, we sought to understand participant perceptions of effective workshop elements and outcomes across a wide range of locations and workshop formats. We surveyed participants in 33 place-based adaptation workshops that took place in the United States between 2017 and 2020. We sought to understand participants’ perceptions of the outcomes of these workshops and the workshop elements that drove those outcomes. Results suggest that workshop participants commonly believed that they learned, strengthened their sense of efficacy, and deepened relationships with other workshop attendees. Participants identified specific climate actions resulting from the workshop, including knowledge dissemination efforts and project implementation. We argue that effective adaptation workshops can also expand reference groups and foster norms around climate change adaptation. 

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3. Disseminating inclusive teaching practices: Findings from the Passion-Driven Statistics Project

   Flaming, K. R.; Dierker, L.; Gallagher, K. M. (January 2021, Teaching tips: A compendium of conference presentations on teaching)

   Scherschel, H.; Rudmann, D.S. (Ed.)

   Passion-Driven Statistics is a project-based, introductory curriculum implemented as a course in statistics, research methods, data science, a capstone experience, and a summer research boot camp with students from a wide variety of academic settings. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the curriculum engages students in authentic projects with large, real-world data sets. Passion-Driven Statistics students were more likely to report increased confidence in working with data and increased interest in pursuing advanced statistics course work compared to students from the traditional statistics course (Dierker et al., 2018a). This presentation draws on pre/post data from 67 instructors attending a Passion-Driven Statistics faculty development workshop. Analyses evaluate instructor characteristics, attitudes, and experiences that predict its implementation. Findings show that nearly half of the instructors who reported being likely to implement passion-driven statistics and a quarter of the overall sample employed the project-based curriculum by the end of the first full academic year following the workshop. Those showing this fast uptake were more likely to be female than those who had not yet implemented (87.5% vs. 55.3%), were more likely to hold a Ph.D. (94.1% vs. 59.2%), and were more likely to be employed by a private rather than public institution (76.5% vs. 46.0%). Those showing fast uptake were also more likely to have been previously using statistical software (i.e., SAS, JMP, R, Stata, Python, or SPSS) in their target course (70.6% vs. 40.0%) and to have greater prior experience with project-based skills and fewer post workshop concerns about their likely success. Results from these analyses will guide recommendations for 1) engaging instructors ready to implement innovation in learning and teaching and 2) supporting those instructors requiring additional time, training and skills. Instructors are the most important resource for promoting innovations and all materials are open educational resources 

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4. What Difference Can a Workshop Make? Lessons from an Evaluation of Eight Place-Based Climate Adaptation Workshops in the United States

   https://doi.org/10.3390/cli14010004  

   Stern, Marc J; Brousseau, Jennifer J; O’Brien, Caleb (December 2025, Climate)

   Place-based climate adaptation workshops are designed to help communities understand their climate-related vulnerabilities and plan adaptive actions in response. Through a series of surveys and interviews with participants, we examined the immediate and long-term impacts of eight place-based climate adaptation workshops in the United States. Six took place online due to COVID-19 restrictions; two took place in-person. All workshops positively enhanced declarative, procedural, and relational knowledge of participants and, to a lesser extent, their personal commitment to work on climate adaptation, optimism about climate adaptation in their communities, and perceptions of qualities of the network of actors engaged locally in climate adaptation. In-person workshops yielded somewhat stronger positive influences on relationship-building than online workshops. Most participants who responded to surveys 6 months to a year after the workshop reported that their workshop had a “minor” to “moderate” impact on stimulating meaningful adaptation actions in their area. Reported actions attributed to the workshops included the incorporation of climate adaptation into formal planning documents, the expansion of adaptation outreach, consideration of climate adaptation in day-to-day planning and decision-making in local government departments, and both successful and unsuccessful grant applications for projects and positions associated with climate adaptation. We describe the workshops’ design, as well as participant assessments of the value of different workshop components. We conclude with lessons learned for future effective workshop planning and design. 

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5. Constructivist Learning as Intervention: A Pre-Post Examination of STEM Interest and Self-Efficacy

   Xu, Y; Yang, M; Zhang, S; Muthukumar, V (April 2025, AERA 2025)

   The core component of this study was a five-week summer camp that provided Arduino and robotics workshops and group activities to girls in grades 6-11. All activities were structured to ensure that learning took place in a constructivist environment. The camp was designed as a program to increase girls’, especially minorities’ participation in computer science and engineering. Key elements of camp participants’ STEM interest, self-efficacy, and contextual factors were measured both before and after the camp. With the collection and analyses of the survey data, our present study is to examine how constructivist learning environment may impact adolescent girls’ STEM learning and interests. 

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