Page 30 - Ideas
P. 30
Associate Professor William Tov teaches Research
Methods, a subject that is generic and features various
abstract concepts that students regularly struggle to
understand. It led him to reflect and explore various ways
to innovate his teaching methodologies.
One of the concepts that has proved particularly
challenging is “statistical power”, namely the likelihood
of distinguishing an actual effect from random variation.
This concept is a fundamentally important component in
research method courses. Statistical power, in turn, is
related to two other abstract concepts – sample size and
effect size. “Sample size” refers to the number of
participants to be recruited for a research study. For
example, when conducting a study, it is impractical to
get everyone in a population (e.g., Singapore) to
participate. Typically, only a subset of people (i.e., a
sample) is obtained. From there, an educated guess is
made as to what is going on in the population. “Effect
William TOV
Associate Professor of Psychology size” refers to how strongly a treatment affects
School of Social Sciences participants’ behaviour relative to a control condition. To
Singapore Management University be thorough, researchers strengthen the evidence for the
effect they want to look at by reading up on past
research.
“If (instructors) find some topic that students struggle
with, then maybe that’s the topic that could be learnt Challenge of teaching abstract concepts
better in the form of a game.”
The difficulty of teaching abstract research concepts is
compounded by the fact that students taking the course
are mainly undergraduates who lack experience
