By Jessie Oehrlein
Information
There is a wide literature and many resources available for teaching in inquiry-based ways at introductory levels, but fewer examples are available for some upper-level courses. I will discuss an upper-level Probability & Statistics I implementation built around students' in-class presentations of solutions and proofs from a series of weekly sets of problems and statements. I will cover the structure of materials given to students and a class period and reflections on the effectiveness of the approach in developing students' mathematical and statistical communication and their understanding of probability theory. Finally, I will reflect on changes for the coming semester based on the first run of the course and student reflections, with an emphasis on supporting students in reading mathematical and statistical language. This has been implemented at a small regional comprehensive university, with a class of around 10 mathematics majors and minors who have taken single-variable calculus but may not have any background in probability, statistics, or proofs. The assessment of the first iteration was largely informal, based on students' self-assessments of their understanding, comfort, and progress through written reflections and solution revisions as well as tracking of student participation at various points in the course.