A Cross-National Comparison of Statistics Curricula

The purpose of this study is to compare Turkey to several other countries such as Singapore, Korea, the United States, and New Zealand according to the field of statistics learning in the curriculum. GAISE (Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education) framework suggests using the components of statistical process (formulate question, collect data, analyze data, interpret results) and developmental levels of statistical process (Levels A, B, and C) in such comparisons. It is found that in both Korea and Turkey, the number of learning outcomes of statistics, as well as the weight of learning outcomes in the curriculum, have been having a weaker profile than in other countries. The field of statistics learning is mostly condensed around Level A in Turkey. On the other hand, other countries in the study included more Level B and C. Considering the importance of statistics instruction, Turkey's national mathematics curriculum needs improvements in its field of statistical learning. This study suggests designing and developing new standards for teaching statistics that deal with higher developmental levels of statistical process.

Educational Leadership Doctoral Students’ Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Instructional Strategies and Course Design in a Fully Online Graduate Statistics Course

In the past several decades, higher education has witnessed exponential growth of online learning, as well as the need for it. New technology has dramatically transformed the way education is delivered compared to what takes place in the traditional classroom. It has enabled online delivery of course materials to students outside of face-to-face classroom in an asynchronous manner and provide students with self-paced flexibility at their convenience. Given the abstract nature of statistics content, effectiveness of the instructional strategies and course design in online statistics instruction has become particularly important to students’ learning success. In this qualitative study, the authors explored perceptions of the Educational Leadership doctoral students towards an online graduate level introductory statistic course in terms of whether the online course instructional strategies and course design helped them learn statistics. The authors assessed effectiveness of the instructional strategies and design of the online statistics course as well as students’ needs, so more effective instructional strategies could be used for online statistics teaching. Students identified the PowerPoint presentations with recorded lectures to be the most useful strategy. This strategy, along with live Q&A sessions, guided practice and activities, helped make the textbook information more real-world and connected the elements of statistics to application.

Effect of a Serious Educational Game on Academic and Affective Outcomes for Statistics Instruction

The overuse of lecture-based approaches for instruction in university courses may have limited student access to knowledge, particularly the transfer of complex concepts, such as central limit theorem in statistics. This study seeks to contribute to empirical research regarding the effectiveness of serious educational games (SEGs) to increase undergraduates’ conceptual understanding and affective interest in statistics. An experimental design was used to test the efficacy of an SEG, Deadly Distribution, which simulates a real-world context to learn and interact with statistics concepts, compared to traditional notes and homework problems, as supplements to instruction in addition to class lectures. Students who played the game had similar increases in academic growth of conceptual knowledge as students who studied traditional course material. Furthermore, this treatment group had a significant increase in affective outcomes compared to the control group. These findings extend the current literature, which is mixed and sparse, on the effectiveness of SEGs in the undergraduate classroom. In an undergraduate introductory statistics course, an SEG might be an effective substitute for traditional study time of course materials outside of class to increase their affect toward the subject matter and produce similar gains for students who might not otherwise study.

Replicating a National Survey on Statistical Training in Undergraduate Psychology Programs

This study describes a close replication of Friedrich, Buday, and Kerr’s late 1990s survey of statistics instruction in undergraduate psychology programs. Disciplinary reform efforts at that time such as the report of the APA Task Force on Statistical Inference, together with recent progress in the new statistics movement, raise important questions about whether undergraduate instruction has kept pace. Other than increases in effect size coverage, instructors’ estimates of class time devoted to critical reform topics have changed relatively little over nearly two decades, with significant attention often reserved for a rarely offered second-level, advanced class. We consider the importance of addressing the statistics curriculum in ways that meet the reading access, critical thinking, and research skill needs of current majors.

Students’ Perceptions of Technology-Enhanced Pedagogy in Their Statistics Learning

<p><em>Statistical literacy, reasoning, and thinking are highly valued in various industries. However, many college students struggle in their required statistic course(s). The use of technology has the potential to bring about positive changes in content, pedagogy, and course format of statistics instruction. This study explores undergraduate business students’ perceptions of the instructor’s technology integration efforts in their statistics learning. The research results reveal that students mostly regarded their learning experience as positive, engaging, informative, and effective. They attributed their learning gain to the instructor’s innovative teaching style, the availability of various learning resources on Moodle, and how the resources were presented.</em><em></em></p>

Early Statistical Reasoning

This paper explores the potential of dynamic statistics software for supporting the early teaching and learning of statistical and probabilistic concepts integrated within the mathematics curriculum. It shares the experiences from a case study that implemented a data-driven approach to mathematics instruction using the dynamic data-visualization software InspireData©, an educational package specifically designed to meet the learning needs of students in the middle and high school grades (Grades 4-12). The authors report on how a group of fourteen (n=14) Grade 4 (about 9-year-old) students used the affordances provided by the dynamic learning environment to gather, analyze, and interpret data, and to draw data-based conclusions and inferences. Findings from the study support the view that mathematics instruction can promote the development of learners' statistical reasoning at an early age, through an informal, data-based approach. They also suggest that the use of dynamic statistics software has the potential to enhance statistics instruction by scaffolding and extending young students' stochastical and mathematical reasoning.

A comparison of the achievement of statistics students enrolled in online and face-to-face settings

This study compared the achievement of male and female students who were enrolled in an online univariate statistics course to students enrolled in a traditional face-to-face univariate statistics course. The subjects, 47 graduate students enrolled in univariate statistics classes at a public, comprehensive university, were randomly assigned to groups that used either online instruction or traditional face-to-face instruction. The effects of the independent variables of online univariate statistics instruction versus traditional face-to-face instruction on the dependent variable of statistics achievement were analyzed with a two-way analysis of variance. There was a significant difference between the achievement of students who used online univariate statistics instruction and those who used traditional face-to-face instruction (p = .001). The traditional face-to-face group scored higher with an effect size of 0.979, indicating that, on the average, those who were enrolled in a traditional face-to-face univariate statistics class outperformed 83.4% of those enrolled in the online statistics course. Moreover, females using online instruction outperformed males using online instruction and males enrolled in a traditional face-to-face course scored higher than females, with an effect size of 0.651, indicating that, on the average, those males outperformed 74.22% of the females enrolled in a traditional face-to-face statistics course.

Learning Outcomes in a Laboratory Environment vs. Classroom for Statistics Instruction: An Alternative Approach Using Statistical Software

The role of any statistics course is to increase the understanding and comprehension of statistical concepts and those goals can be achieved via both theoretical instruction and statistical software training. However, many introductory courses either forego advanced software usage, or leave its use to the student as a peripheral activity. The purpose of this study was to determine if there was instructional value in replacing classroom time with laboratory time dedicated to statistical software usage. The first approach used classroom lecture presentations, while the second replaced one classroom period per week with statistical software laboratories. It was hypothesized that replacing classroom time with software based laboratories would increase the level of statistics knowledge as compared to an otherwise identical class with no lab based component. Both pre-course and end-of course surveys were used, as well as identical examination questions. Comparisons within a time point, and longitudinal performance over the course were both evaluated. Survey results indicated that students would recommend lab based instruction significantly more than a primarily lecture based instruction (32% more, p=.020). Additionally, the performance improvement over the course of the semester was significantly higher for those students participating in laboratories (19.2% increase, p=.011). These findings indicate that sacrificing classroom time for a laboratory period improves the educational experience in an introductory statistics course and may help with the understanding and retention of difficult topics.