09/18/2026
This month, we’re spotlighting CourseKata instructor Damian Palafox, who has been teaching with CourseKata for about five years at the Palm Desert Campus of CSU San Bernardino.
For Damian, one of the biggest benefits of CourseKata is the opportunity to make statistics feel real and relevant to students. Rather than encountering data only as abstract numbers, his students gather and analyze data from their own classroom. A point on a scatterplot might actually represent one of them—giving students a personal connection to the data and helping bring statistical ideas to life. Sharing this at the 2026 CSU CourseKata Teaching Innovation Potluck, he inspired other CSU professors to bring this approach to their own classrooms.
Damian’s classroom also goes well beyond traditional lectures. His students might experiment with gummy bears, survey one another, or analyze data from a shuffled deck of cards. These activities give students firsthand experience with what it means to ask questions, collect data, and conduct research. Once students get past their initial apprehension about coding, Damian sees them begin to get creative with their own code and research questions, using tools like the CourseKata Sandbox and Jupyter Notebooks to explore their ideas.
That freedom to explore is central to Damian’s approach. Students who begin the course nervous about statistics or coding often end up telling him that it was one of their best learning experiences!
Thank you, Damian, for showing what can happen when students are given real data, meaningful questions, and the freedom to explore!
