T04: An Interactive Classroom Activity to Support Interpretations of Statistical Results


By Janine Allwright, Stacy Bjorkman


Information

Interactive visualization activities facilitate student engagement and positive learning experiences. Such activities can be particularly useful in statistics classes which are often deemed by students as difficult and irrelevant to their academic and career goals. In this presentation, we will share an Articulate Rise 360 learning tool, implemented in an undergraduate “Introduction to Basic Statistics” course at an online university. Since 2023, this tool has been used by approximately 200 students. The activity motivates students to “tell the story of the data” by aligning sample statistical scenarios, research questions, test results, and interpretations for various statistics tasks and tests. The exemplars include significant and nonsignificant versions of scenarios to encourage students to draw conclusions and deliver meaningful interpretations of statistical results. To illustrate, a nonsignificant outcome in this tool includes the following example sentence: “Statistical nonsignificance does not allow us to generalize our sample findings across the greater population.” This sentence builds on the students’ understanding of the difference between significant versus nonsignificant results, a proven bottleneck for statistics students. Since its implementation, this tool has generated positive reviews from students, including from one student who wrote on the course evaluation:” Probably would not have passed this course without them!”