Statistics Education Sessions at SSC Annual Meeting 2010

  • Innovative Tools in Teaching Statistics

    • Organized by Zeny Mateo and Saumen Mandal

    • Paul Corey, University of Toronto    
      Games and Stories in the Teaching of Statistics

      The teacher lucky enough to be with an exceptionally bright and enthusiastic group of students in the health and life sciences must appreciate that their first love is not statistics. In order to convey the essential concepts of statistics and show their relevance to data analysis they must use a minimum of formulae and embed the message in a collection of games and stories. The purpose of this talk is to share with my fellow teachers some stories and ggames that I have found to be very useful and to attract from the audience other examples of such gamesmanship.

    • David Loewen, University of Manitoba [Slides]
      Electronic Homework:  Does Student Learning Improve if Questions Have More Detailed Steps?

      Online homework systems can provide many pedagogical advantages for students. In multi-section introductory statistics courses at the University of Manitoba, the on-line homework delivery system WebAssign is used for all assignments completed outside of class. This study, conducted as a randomized block design experiment in the second course, investigates the effect of giving students the opportunity to answer intermediate steps in solving homework problems. The treatment group received the assignments with the intermediate steps.  Each group was the treatment group on two of the four questions tested. Some benefits were detected, but not to the degree hoped.

    • Larry Weldon, Simon Fraser University [Slides and hand-out are available here]
      Strategies for Teaching an Enduring Knowledge of Statistics

      The futility of teaching students to master calculations without conceptual understanding is widely acknowledged. However, there are incentives for both instructors and students to focus on calculations. In this paper strategies are suggested for encouraging students to gain a conceptual understanding of statistics: open book tests and exams, elimination of the traditional textbook, emphasis on verbalization and visualization, use of open-ended case studies, and an emphasis on process rather than product. It is argued that these strategies are likely to result in a more useful knowledge of statistics than more traditional approaches. Some evidence from the author’s experience is provided.

  • What can we learn from each other about teaching statistics?
    Organized by Alison Gibbs and Bethany White

     

    • Robert delMas, Joan Garfield & Andrew Zieffler, University of Minnesota [CATALST Project website (slides available here)]
      A Radical Approach to Teaching Introductory Statistics: The CATALST Project
      The NSF-funded CATALST (Change Agents for Teaching and Learning Statistics) project is developing a new curriculum for non-calculus based introductory statistics courses that builds on ideas from statistics education, cognitive science, and mathematics education. Instead of standard statistical procedures, students learn randomization and simulation methods to carry out inferential analyses. Key to the new curriculum are Model Eliciting Activities (MEAs), which are open-ended problems that use real and meaningful data to engage students in statistical thinking. This presentation will share information on the CATALST project as well as materials developed and piloted in the first two years of the project.

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    • Dennis Pearl, Ohio State University [CAUSE website]
      CAUSE: Building Partnerships to Advance College Level Statistics Education
      The Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE: see www.CAUSEweb.org) is an organization that focuses on providing resources and professional development opportunities to college statistics teachers, and on advancing the fields of statistics education and statistics education research. This talk will discuss a variety of CAUSE initiatives in these focus areas including the CAUSEweb digital library, the CAUSEway and SCHEMATYC workshop programs, the CAUSE webinar series in Teaching and
      Learning and in Activities for Teaching, the U.S. Teaching Statistics (USCOTS), Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS), CAUSEmos faculty community groups, and the CAUSE/ASA Statistics Education graduate programs initiative.

    • Bethany White, University of Western Ontario [CSEN website]
      The Canadian Statistics Educator Network
      Have you ever felt isolated in your teaching endeavours and wanted to bounce teaching ideas off other statistics educators? Does the sharing of tools of the trade and learning from others’ experiences in the classroom sound appealing? Through an Educational Developers Caucus grant, the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) has supported the development of the Canadian Statistics Educator Network (CSEN: see www.stats.uwo.ca/CSEN), a virtual community of practice that aims to encourage more collaborative initiatives in Canadian statistics education. The purpose of this talk is to introduce you to the CSEN, demonstrate its features and solicit your feedback.
       

  • The slides from Nancy Reid's gold medal address are available here.