In this interview, SSC President Erica Moodie and two SSC committee chairs interview Michael Zyphur, director of Instats, to learn more about Instats services and share details of this new partnership so that SSC members can make the most of this new membership benefit.
Erica: Michael, please tell us about yourself and the platform that you have created.
Thank you, Erica, it’s great to be able to talk about Instats (instats.org) and our new partnership with the SSC, which offers significant benefits to SSC members and the broader statistics and data science community. I’m currently the director of Instats and a professor of quantitative methods at the University of Queensland in Australia, with a PhD in industrial and organizational psychology from Tulane University (2006). Over the years, I’ve gained significant expertise in statistics, psychometrics, and core quantitative methods as well as their pedagogy, which I bring to my role as the director of Instats to coordinate our activities with over 400 partners worldwide (including individual researchers, universities, and professional associations/societies).
Instats is an online platform designed by and for researchers to democratize access to expert-led research training globally. To do this, we are leveraging technology to allow researchers from various fields easy access to expert knowledge and a connection to their broader knowledge community. By offering flexible and innovative learning experiences through online seminars, workshops, and courses, our mission is to enhance research practices across all relevant academic disciplines.
We achieve this by partnering with institutions and professional organizations—like the SSC—to deliver content tailored to their communities' needs and interests. We do this in a very unique way: consistent with our commitment to scholarly values, we provide free access to our platform for SSC and its members to create new events and content that can be either free or fee based. In the case of fee-based content, we share all revenue equitably and we do not attempt to own anyone’s IP. As academics ourselves, our primary goals are democratizing research training and enabling academic freedom.
Erica: SSC members were just recently alerted to our new partnership and sent a link to direct them to create an account with Instats that links them to the SSC. Can you please walk us through main user experiences for SSC members, such as registering for a course through completion, or even offering new content?
SSC members enjoy a streamlined registration process. Creating an Instats user account takes only about 10 seconds, during which members can link their SSC membership. Upon confirming their email, SSC members receive an automatic 30% discount on fee-based content and access to exclusive free content.
Users can easily browse available courses using filters for topics, dates, instructors, formats, and costs. Upon registering for a live-streaming seminar, participants receive a Zoom link and can attend live sessions or access professionally edited recordings asynchronously, typically within 12 hours. Recordings remain available for 30 days, accommodating participants worldwide.
For those interested in offering content, Instats provides an intuitive platform that leverages AI to rapidly create course pages, PowerPoint slides, and other materials in about 20 seconds, significantly reducing setup time and making the process of sharing expertise straightforward and scalable. This ease of use allows SSC members to share their expertise with minimal technical barriers or the kinds of administrative and other hurdles often experienced at a university.
Kuan Liu, chair of the student and recent graduate committee (SARGC), and fellow committee members Gracia Dong and Amadou Diogo Barry, and past chair Luke Hagar: Could you please share more about Instats’ mission and its advantages compared to other online learning resources?
Instats’ mission is to provide accessible, high-quality research training that fosters innovation and global collaboration. Unlike other platforms, Instats prioritizes flexibility for both learners and instructors, with free AI tools that make drafting new events and content extremely easy. We offer diverse learning formats, ranging from theoretical discussions to interactive, hands-on exercises, allowing instructors to tailor their teaching styles.
The platform is equipped with AI capabilities, enabling instructors to efficiently create and deliver content. Additionally, community-building features—such as forums, Q&A boards, social networking and social media functionality, and a research consulting marketplace with automated invoicing and billing functions—which further differentiate Instats by fostering engagement and collaboration beyond the more traditional learning environment. This versatility allows our collaborators and users to tailor their content and learning experiences based on their needs.
Kuan: How does the interaction between teachers and students occur on Instats?
Interaction on Instats is dynamic and adaptable to different course formats. In live seminars or workshops, participants can ask questions via Zoom’s chat feature or interact directly with instructors, depending on the nature of the session. For asynchronous learning, participants can post questions on forums or Q&A boards, where instructors or peers can respond. This ensures meaningful engagement and continuous learning, regardless of the course format. Additionally, instructors can assign exercises or hands-on activities depending on the course structure.
Denis Talbot, chair of the membership committee: Are there courses or webinars that are offered both in English and in French?
Yes! Instats offers content in multiple languages, including French and Chinese. While most courses are in English, we are expanding our multilingual offerings to better serve diverse communities. Additionally, captions are provided for courses, making them more accessible to non-native speakers. This flexibility ensures that our platform caters to global research training needs as well as the expertise and rich backgrounds of our partners.
Denis: What is the typical price of trainings offered through Instats?
We have a large set of free training content, and for fee-based content we allow our partners to control their own pricing—this is not something that Instats sets centrally or otherwise controls given our status as more of a marketplace than a content publisher. The price of our fee-based offerings typically varies depending on the length and complexity of the course. However, in addition to many introductory sessions being free, all SSC members receive an automatic 30% discount on all fee-based content. Furthermore, SSC can price its own content independently, enabling you and your members to offer free or deeply discounted courses exclusively for your members.
Kuan Liu (SARGC): How does Instats support students in preparing for job interviews and enabling them to add value when starting their careers in data-driven industries?
The most important thing in a job interview is to be competent in the knowledge and skills required for a given role, and for this, Instats can be of significant help. Courses on applied tools like R and Python, along with insights into data-driven decision-making for social, health, and physical science applications can help participants stand out in academia and competitive industries. By focusing on both theory and technical expertise, participants in our seminars can gain real-world problem-solving skills along with the terminology needed to fit in with a given community of experts.
Erica: The American Statistical Association (ASA) has a somewhat longer partnership with Instats as compared to the SSC. How are you seeing ASA members take advantage of that partnership? What feedback have you received from ASA members?
ASA members have been actively engaging with our platform since we partnered with them. Popular topics among ASA members include using AI tools such as ChatGPT as a research assistant and causal inference methods—core areas of interest across many statistical applications these days. Recently, there has also been significant interest in workshops exploring how AI tools like ChatGPT can be ethically integrated into research workflows not only as a writing assistant but also for help with writing data analysis code and interpreting results. Feedback from ASA members and the broader community has been overwhelmingly positive, with Instats having an average course rating of 4.87 out of 5.0 across all of our offerings—highlighting the usefulness of our platform and the relevance of our expert-led content.
Erica: Can you tell us more about Instats’ marketplace for statistical and data science consulting?
The marketplace connects experts with individuals or organizations in need of statistical or data science support with a large set of global experts who have the needed knowledge and skills. This feature of our platform and partnerships fosters collaboration by providing a platform where researchers can offer their consultation as a service, and clients can find tailored solutions for study design, data analysis, and interpretation to suit their needs. This also offers additional monetization opportunities for our partners who are interested in offering consulting, while our platform’s automated billing and invoicing features as well as our global payment processing capabilities makes it easy to do the work and get paid—no matter where our partner and their client might live across the globe.
Erica: What does Instats have to offer those statisticians who are perhaps less actively involved in research but looking for professional development opportunities?
Instats offers a substantial number of practical, career-focused learning opportunities for applied statisticians and data analysts who may not be actively involved in academic research but are seeking professional development. Workshops on new software features, advanced data visualization, and practical applications of various tools across a broad range of software can help professionals stay current with industry trends. Instats content is ideal for anyone seeking to enhance their technical skills without necessarily engaging in academic research—helping professionals stay current with industry trends without needing academic involvement. In sum, we care very deeply about the provision of useful knowledge and skills for anyone conducting serious forms of inquiry. We have built the Instats platform to help democratize access to expert-led research training, while supporting partners such as the SSC and its members to connect with each other and offer their significant expertise to a global audience.
Erica: Thank you for your time and for sharing more about this exciting platform.