Research

  • Presents a method for evaluating educational software. The evaluation is designed as a field study, and is comprised of a test of remedial skills, an essay test of conceptual understanding, and a system that records how students use a given program. The instruments were used to evaluate ConStatS, a program for teaching conceptual understanding of probability and statistics. Ss were 327 undergraduates who used ConStatS and 63 control Ss who used tool-based statistics software but not ConStatS. Ss in the experimental group did better on 92 of the 103 questions than control Ss; the 10 questions on which the experimental group showed the greatest improvement over the control group involved transformations, probability, and the concepts of deviation and sensitivity of summary measures. (PsycLIT Database Copyright 1995 American Psychological Assn, all rights reserved)

  • Presents a simple model of generative learning that permits the definition of 4 kinds of interactions (scaffolding, investigation, reformulation, and navigation) and a system for tracing and recording how students use educational technology. This model will maintain a link between interaction and learning, thus providing one method for the assessment of a wide range of educational technology environments. Two results are presented from an evaluation of ConStatS, a program for teaching conceptual understanding of probability and statistics, in which 659 college students participated. Both results focus on a specific interaction that correlates with increased learning, and on the general patterns of interaction that characterize students who execute the interactions. (PsycLIT Database Copyright 1996 American Psychological Assn, all rights reserved)

  • Evaluates the use of computerized tutorial support for elementary statistics instruction in five education and social work courses, both graduate and undergraduate. Pretests and posttests used to measure student attitudes toward statistics and toward computers are described, and preferred learning environments before and after the course are discussed. (8 references) (Author/LRW)

  • Examined individual differences in procedures for learning to use a statistical computing package among 36 students who were computer novices. Ss provided think aloud protocols over sessions of learning to use the package. Success in learning depended on use of particular learning procedures. In Exp 1, 5 faster learners tackled problems in a goal-directed, structured manner, abandoning one approach when appropriate and trying alternative approaches. The 5 slower learners engaged in unsystematic trial and error search, were repetitive in their approaches to problem solving, gave up more frequently, and paid less attention to prompts and error messages. In Exp 2, instructing Ss to use the effective procedures identified in Exp 1 enhanced their performance on statistical computing problems. (PsycLIT Database Copyright 1990 American Psychological Assn, all rights reserved)

  • Description of a study which formulated a model of the cognitive processes involved in learning statistics material via computer assisted learning (CAL) focuses on mode of presentation (aural or visual), sequence of the material, and previous mathematical experience. Textual analysis is discussed and implications of the results for design of CAL are presented. (LRW)

  • Discussion of the effects of group aptitudes on achievement during small group learning highlights two studies that examined the effects of group composition on high and low aptitude college students. Heterogeneous and homogeneous aptitude groups are described, and an individual mastery contingency in the second study is explained. (21 references) (LRW)

  • This paper discusses the premise that young children do not perceive accurate relationships between the behavior of different, but related random generators. Data for this preliminary study has been collected from suburban primary school students aged from 7 - 12 years, who were questioned about their perceptions of the behavior of dice, coins, raffle tickets and a range of different and unusual random generators in identical situations. The findings indicate that children predict different result depending for example, on whether tickets rather than dice are used in a game. Their predictions appears to be based on the observation of the physical differences between dice and raffle tickets. Owing to the size of the preliminary study no tests of significance have been carried out and results are given in simple percentages.

  • The traditional assessment of students' learning in statistics courses has followed the model used for mathematics and many other subject areas; that is time constrained written examinations. In New Zealand a large proportion of statistics assessment is still of this form. In order to determine whether this is the most appropriate form of assessing statistics learning consideration needs to be given to the following: - fundamental differences between the content of statistics and other courses, - the skills required of statistics learners, - the purpose(s) of assessment, and - whether particular forms of assessment advantage or disadvantage some groups of learners. While this paper raises issues related to the first three points above, the major focus is on the last. Performance in the national examinations sat by secondary school students in New Zealand is analysed for gender and ethnic differences in two different forms of assessment: project based internal assessment and traditional written examination.

  • This chapter is devoted to the research on probability which may be found in the subject of psychology, and deals with various research paradigms. Salient experimental tasks and research issues on how individuals cope with probabilistic settings are discussed. The objective is to provide a substantiated and representative review of the large number of psychological investigations. We start by presenting an indicative sample of psychological studies on people's response to probabilistic problems. Critical dimensions for judging the educational relevance of paradigms and issues will be introduced. The few developmental theories which deal with the acquisition of probability in psychology will be discussed. Shortcomings and perspectives of the educational research are critically examined in the concluding sections.

  • Box and whisker plots were introduced to a group of eight students for enrichment and foolow-up sessions as part of a project looking at the ideas that 11 and 12-year-olds have about central tendency and dispersion. This paper reports some tentative findings about the teaching and learning of box and whisker plots to middle-school children.

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