CanCOTS 2025

The first Canadian Conference on Teaching Statistics (CanCOTS 2025) will be hosted by HEC Montréal from Wednesday June 11th to Thursday June 12th, 2025. CanCOTS will be a participant-driven working meeting in the style of a curated “unconference”. After an initial roundtable aimed at engaging participants with state-of-the-art literature, the participants will split in small groups, each working on a priority area of interest. These priority areas will be short-listed before the meeting, so participants can arrive already having an idea of what they may want to collaboratively contribute to with their time, and can bring potential resources to share with the group.

Each small group will define and, at the end of the meeting, leave with concrete deliverables, either in progress or completed. Depending on the priority area, these deliverables could be in the form of conference proceeding papers or less traditional formats (e.g., banks of exercises, guidelines for curriculum, sample learning activities and assessment items, etc.)

Registration

Registration is now open online until June 1st. Registration is 75$ for postdoctoral fellows and students and 125$ for regular members. These fees cover notably lunches and coffee breaks.

Format

Each small working group will be led by a team leader who will facilitate discussion and encourage progress toward the agreed upon deliverable(s). This team leader will also be responsible for giving a short introduction to the priority area to help launch the first day, and to motivate the working sessions that follow. Each group will present to all participants at the beginning of the second day to give a quick recap of the progress they made, and a final presentation at the end of the conference. The team leaders will be selected from volunteers from the community of statistics educators attending the conference, and will oversee the deliverables. CanCOTS will also be used to discuss the current state and needs of the statistical education community in Canada.

Financial support

We are reserving $4K of the budget for travel support thanks to funding from CANSSI and CRM, which will be awarded based on need. The priority will be for graduate students and early career researchers (less than five years from latest degree) without support from Tri-Council funding or equivalent grants.

Funding will be allocated by the scientific committee after the conference and adjudicated based on need. Participants must send their CV and a cover letter to the scientific committee to ask for support, explaining how they’d use the travel funds, whether not receiving funding would limit their ability to attend, and whether they have other sources of (partial) funding; the scientific committee will adjudicate the funding based on participants needs.

Priority areas

Participants must choose a working group upon registration (it will be possible to modify the latter by changing your answer in the form). Each working group will define and, at the end of the meeting, leave with concrete deliverables, either in progress or completed. The group leaders will contact participants at the beginning of June to exchange material and decide on outcomes.

The list of working groups and team leaders is

Designing a modern master program in statistics or data science (Wesley Burr, Lisa Lix)
Interactive tutorials for learning via R via webR and learnR (Russell Steele)
Universal design for learning in statistics education (Nathalie Moon)
Teaching advanced analytical topics in biostatistics courses (Kuan Liu)
Incorporating artificial intelligence and ethics in statistics curriculum (Anne-Sophie Charest)
Evidence-based teaching (Asal Asleman)
Inclusive and culturally responsive teaching in statistics (Arjun Banik)
Incorporating causal inference in statistics courses (G. Alexi Rodríguez-Arelis)
CEGEP satellite workshop working group

Venue

The conference will take place on the 5th floor of the Hélène Desmarais building.

501, rue De La Gauchetière Ouest Montréal, QC H2Z 1Z5

The main room will be Salle de cours MNP (A.536) (pdf map) and adjacent study rooms.

The downtown campus is easily reached by public transport, either via metro (Square-Victoria-OACI station, orange line), or from the Gare Centrale REM station.

Accommodation

Please note that the conference ends the day prior to Formula 1 Montreal start, so we encourage you to book your accommodation well in advance. Hotels nearby include the following

Satellite workshop

A satellite workshop for college instructors on simulation-based inference will take place on Tuesday, June 10th. The focus is on the Probability and Statistics course offered in the pre-university degree in Natural sciences, Sciences and arts, and Science, Computer Science and Mathematics, among others. The day will include a two hours session in the morning. Participants will then collaboratively work on a project of their choice in small group to bring something home. The four working groups are

incorporation of large thematic datasets
adding programming languages for data science for calculations
simulations and apps to illustrate probability and statistical concepts
construction of exercises databases (WeBWork, learnR), etc.

There will be a session in English and one in French; please specify your language of preference when registering.

Participants can use the form to register; registration closes on June 1st. Registration is 35$ and covers lunch and coffee breaks.

Schedule:

Registration and welcome (9:00)
Mini-course (9:30-10:30, 11:00-12:00)
Lunch break (12:00-13:00)
Group work (13:00-16:30)
Wrap-up and short presentations (16:30-17:00)

Background

“Conferences On Teaching Statistics” have a long and rich history, starting from the earliest such international conferences (International Conference on Teaching Statistics – ICOTS) in 1982 (Sheffield, UK) and 1986 (Victoria, Canada). A total of eleven ICOTS have been held, every 4 years since 1982, and a number of regional versions, including