Dear Colleagues:
We are looking for instructors of introductory statistics who can help
us to gather some data to assist in refining and finalizing an
assessment of statistical reasoning as part of the NSF e-ATLAS project.
This assessment is called Goals and Outcomes of Learning Statistics
(GOALS). Many of you have given earlier versions of the instrument in
the past as part of our pilot testing. Since then, there have been some
small changes in light of the data analyzed.
Please see below for details on the current version of GOALS. Thank you
for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Joan Garfield, Bob delMas, Andy Zieffler, Elizabeth Fry, Ethan Brown,
and Anelise Sabbag,, University of Minnesota
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GOALS statistical reasoning assessment
The Goals and Outcomes of Learning Statistics (GOALS) assessment was
developed as part of the NSF e-ATLAS project. The primary focus of GOALS
is to assess students’ statistical reasoning developed during a first
statistics course. Based on the pilot testing of an earlier version of
GOALS, we believe that this assessment provides valuable information on
what students are learning and how they are able to reason at the end of
their courses, and ultimately may be used to identify changes in student
learning over time.
GOALS includes 20 forced-choice items which sample the content of a
modern first course in statistics. This content includes students’
understanding and reasoning about important statistical ideas such as
variability, sampling variability, confidence intervals and p-values.
The assessment does not include items related to more traditional topics
such as reading a histogram or interpreting a mean.
We would like your help in gathering data on the new GOALS assessment at
the end of the current fall term. GOALS can be administered online in
about 30 to 45 minutes. While not all of the content on GOALS may be
covered in your course, we expect that nearly all of it will be familiar
to your students.
If you are willing to have your students take the GOALS assessment,
please go to the following link:
https://apps3.cehd.umn.edu/artist/goals
Click the REGISTER button at the bottom of the page, which will take you
to the registration form. You will be asked to enter the following
information:
1. Your name and email address
2. The name of your institution, its location (City, State and
Country), and the type of institution
3. The department you teach in primarily.
4. Your position at your institution.
Once you have filled in all of the requested information, click the
SUBMIT button to send your registration.
Meanwhile, if you have any questions please e-mail Bob delMas at
delma001(a)umn.edu <mailto:delma001@umn.edu>
Thank you so much for helping us work on the development and use of this
instrument.
Sincerely,
The e-ATLAS Team
University of Minnesota