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Engaging and motivating students in undergraduate statistics courses can be enhanced by using topical peer-reviewed publications for analyses as part of course assignments. Given the popularity of on-campus therapy dog stress-reduction programs, this topic fosters buy-in from students whilst providing information regarding the importance of mental health and well-being as it impacts learning. This article describes how instructors can use a study on the benefits of human-dog interactions to teach students about study design, data collection and ethics, and hypothesis testing. The data and research questions are accessible to students without requiring detailed subject-area knowledge. Students can think carefully about how to collect and analyze data from a randomized controlled trial with two-sample hypothesis tests. Instructors can use these data for short in-class examples or longer assignments and assessments, and throughout this article, we suggest activities and discussion questions. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Statistical competitions like ASA DataFest and the Women in Data Science (WiDS) Datathon give students valuable experience working with real, challenging data. By participating, students practice important statistics and data science skills including data wrangling, visualization, modeling, communication, and teamwork. However, while advanced students may have already acquired these skills over the course of their undergraduate program, students with less experience often need additional preparation to participate. In this article, we discuss strategies and targeted activities for helping lower-level students feel comfortable and prepared to compete in events like DataFest. We also share how we used these tools to create a low-stakes DataFest preparation course at our institution. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.