E-learning project earns Dr. Schmid national spotlight

Kendra Schmid, Ph.D., recently returned from the Joint Statistics Meeting in Seattle, the nation’s largest annual conference for statisticians.

Dr. Schmid was there to lead a session, drawing on the e-modules she created in 2014 as part of UNMC’s first foray into creating e-learning materials. Her five modules, entitled “Biostatistics Primer,” so impressed festival organizers that it was designated an “invited presentation.”

“The process for getting an invited presentation is very competitive,” Dr. Schmid said. “There are hundreds of submissions followed by a voting process.”

Dr. Schmid’s series of modules — designed to provide basic statistics information, particularly to people in the health sciences — was well-received.

“I think it was strong and viewed favorably because as statisticians, we are always trying to help people interpret or analyze data correctly,” she said. “The theme for this conference was ‘Statistics for Better Decision Making.’ The session I was in focused on how as statisticians we can help non-statisticians, especially in the health sciences, to use their data and provide some fundamental tools to make decisions using their data.”

The presentation drew around 100 people, Dr. Schmid said.

“We had four very different presentations in the same session, but all on the same topic, and so it was very interesting to see the different approaches to the same challenges and the same issue by other people,” she said.

Going forward, Dr. Schmid plans to add more modules to her primer, which has had a wider application than she originally conceived when she designed it last year.

“After these five have been used as a set, I can see pieces that are missing still.”

In addition to using them at the university, Dr. Schmid also has used them in classes she’s taught to middle school teachers and high school teachers.

“They’ve really been useful, and in a much broader context than I had originally thought. So I would like to develop at least a couple more. I really like the way they turned out and how user friendly they are.”

Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Dele Davies, M.D., who leads the e-learning initiative, congratulated Dr. Schmid on being selected to the conference and for the success of her presentation.

“When we began this effort, we knew that there were many talented people at UNMC who had a lot of creativity and knowledge to bring to the process,” he said. “Dr. Schmid’s recognition by her peers adds to the growing proof that this effort is helping to put UNMC on the cutting edge of health science education.