Module design
At Nottingham, students attend one lab class every two weeks
and each lasts up to 3 hours. Thus this module contains 10 weeks of materials
that are spread across a year of teaching. This module runs alongside a module
in statistics and is designed so that the materials being taught in the two
classes match up as closely as possible (the notable exception is that in the
first few weeks no inferential tests have been taught but t-tests are being
used in labs).
The classes at Nottingham run in computer labs with roughly
60 computers. Students typically run with one student per computer, although
one computer between two is also perfectly feasible (this has been done when
fewer computers have been available).
Most of the classes involve a period of lecture, about the
study, the software or report writing, followed by data collection, followed by
analysis.