The thing about my way of teaching stats is that my cool, novel examples get old really fast. Like, pop culture is on a thirty-day cycle. Anyway, YEARS ago, 2014 to be exact, I blogged about illustrating bimodal data distributions using baby name data from the Social Security Administration. Specifically, when an older name comes back into vogue, it has a bimodal distribution when you plot time on the X axis. I stand by this example. However, all of the data illustrations come from 2014. When our traditionally aged college students were 6 or 7. Which makes this example feel a little stale. However, here is some data, courtesy of Redditor fevaah , showing old names that are back in vogue through 2025 ! And Eleanor, Violet, Nora, and Hazel are here, illustrating bimodal distributions for a new generation. If you used my old baby-name data, this is a quick, easy refresh for your lectures (or a fun new addition if you didn't). If this idea was help...
Back in the day, I remember having to complete an online research ethics course in order to serve as an undergraduate research assistant at Penn State.
I think that such training could be used as an exercise/assessment in a research methods class or an advanced statistics class.
NOTE: These examples are sponsored by the American agencies and, thus, teach participants about American laws and rules. If you have information about similar training in other countries (or other free options for American researchers), please email me and I will add the link.
Online Research Ethics Course from the U.S. Health and Human Service's Office of Research Integrity.
Features: Six different learning modules, each with a quiz and certificate of completion. These sections include separate quizzes on the treatment of human and animal test subjects. Other portions also address ethical relationships between PIs and RAs and broader issues of professional responsibility when reporting results.
National Institute of Health's Protecting Human Subject Participants
Features: Requires free registration. Four different, quizzed learning modules. This one includes some lessons about the historical need for IRBs, the Belmont Report, the need to respect and protect our participants. This also provides a certificate at the end of the training.
I think that such training could be used as an exercise/assessment in a research methods class or an advanced statistics class.
NOTE: These examples are sponsored by the American agencies and, thus, teach participants about American laws and rules. If you have information about similar training in other countries (or other free options for American researchers), please email me and I will add the link.
Online Research Ethics Course from the U.S. Health and Human Service's Office of Research Integrity.
Features: Six different learning modules, each with a quiz and certificate of completion. These sections include separate quizzes on the treatment of human and animal test subjects. Other portions also address ethical relationships between PIs and RAs and broader issues of professional responsibility when reporting results.
National Institute of Health's Protecting Human Subject Participants
Features: Requires free registration. Four different, quizzed learning modules. This one includes some lessons about the historical need for IRBs, the Belmont Report, the need to respect and protect our participants. This also provides a certificate at the end of the training.