Proposal Description

Interdisciplinary collaboration is a fundamental skillset for today’s statisticians and data scientists. Yet, formal instruction in collaboration is rare in statistics programs. As a response and to help increase the impact of statisticians, the LISA 2020 Global Network was formed. With its first labs being created and joining in 2014, this global network has grown to 37 stat labs in 11 developing countries. With more than a decade of experience educating and training students and staff to collaborate with data producers and data decision makers to transform evidence into action for the benefit of society. This session will feature six statistics educators from the LISA 2020 Global Network who are already formally educating and training their undergraduate and postgraduate students to become effective interdisciplinary collaborators.

#1: “Collaboration Across Cultures” from Prof. Eric Vance will address how the Attitude-Structure-Content-Communication-Relationship (ASCCR) framework was adapted to be a culturally and linguistically relevant framework for Indonesia. He will present results from teaching this new collaboration framework to 88 Indonesian statistics and data science undergraduates.

#2: “Beyond Analysis: Communicating Statistical Concepts for Effective Collaboration.” Prof. Maureen Tobechukwu Nwakuya will speak about her new stat lab (created in 2023) at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria and its impacts on both statistics students and domain experts from a variety of fields. She will address the educational challenges and opportunities afforded by her statistical collaboration laboratory.

#3 “Instilling Core Competencies for Collaboration in the Next Generation of African Biostatisticians.” Tonya Esterhuizen from Stellenbosch University, South Africa will present eight years of experience from her course using practical approaches to improving communication skills and relationships based on the ASCCR framework. Students progress from role play, to planning, conducting and assessing real-world collaborations, culminating in a mentored internship.

#4 “Establishment, Implementation and Practice of Teaching Statistical Consulting at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte.” Prof. Marcus Nunes will speak about how, in Brazil, the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) stands out by including in the initial years university outreach curricular components focused on the practical training of statistical consultants. He will speak about the process of establishing statistical consulting courses in the UFRN Bachelor's Degree in Statistics program, describing its curricular structure, teaching methodologies, and key results obtained.

#5 “Teaching Collaboration at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.” Prof. Olusanya Olubusoye, Ms.Kafayat Alobaloke, and Ms. Honey Adeleke will speak about the experiences of formally educating students in interdisciplinary collaboration.

Discussant: Prof. Olawale Awe from Ludwigsburg University of Education, Germany, is the founder and director of the ADA Data Science Academy, an online entity providing data science and statistical collaboration skills to hundreds of students and professionals from across Africa. He will discuss the five papers and offer his unique perspective on teaching statistical collaboration in an online environment.

Chair: Prof. Asifa Kamal, Lahore College for Women University, Pakistan