Proceedings

  • A new simulation has been developed to facilitate developmental learning of statistical inference. This simulation has been designed in the light of current multimedia design principals and cognitive theory. While many simulations have been developed to help students understand a variety of statistical concepts, evaluations of what these simulations actually achieve have been relatively scarce. This paper presents a model for the evaluation of simulations. In particular, the paper discusses the way in which the development of the students' conceptual understanding has been assessed. Some preliminary results from the evaluation of this specific project are presented.

  • What is important to assess in statistics education? Usually the answer is derived from course content, i.e., teachers assess key elements of what they have taught. This talk focuses on critical statistical skills needed by adults as part of general everyday or workplace functioning. The talk is motivated by emerging plans by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for a new Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in coming years. PIAAC will be somewhat similar in general terms to the PISA assessment program of high-school students which is now implemented in dozens of countries on a cyclical basis, but will focus on the skills of adults who are outside formal schooling, and on their economic and social participation.<br>One of the several domains assessed in PIAAC will be numeracy, and one of the strands in it will be knowledge of statistics (data and chance). We need to identify core knowledge areas expected of adults in data/chance which are valued enough to spend precious assessment time on in multiple countries, using realistic stimuli or authentic tasks which are likely to arise in the lives of many adults. The talk will present some of the design principles of the numeracy assessment in PIAAC, and solicit suggestions for possible assessment tasks. The discussion will emphasize the need for linking class assessments and real-life demands, in order to enhance learners' ability to transfer learned skills and cope effectively with functional statistical demands in the real world.

  • In this paper we report the results from a major UK government-funded project, started in 2005, to review statistics within the school mathematics curriculum for students up to age 16. New teaching materials that explicitly use a problem-solving approach through other subjects have been developed. We will report extensive trialling of these, the development of corresponding new assessment regimes and how these work in the classroom. The new ways of assessing are particularly poignant since, in September 2006, the UK government announced that coursework is to be dropped for mathematics exams sat by 16-year-old. As a consequence, areas of the curriculum previously assessed by coursework, are now being ignored. We will provide some new and useful ways of assessing this content. Our findings have implications for teaching, learning and assessing statistics for students of the subject at all ages.

  • Students can be stimulated to become active learners using a tool for active writing. In our university we developed such a tool: POLARIS. Active writings of students about statistical concepts are valuable for the students and the teacher. In their writings students show their understanding of statistical topics. The problem then is how to interpret the writings of students in relation to their proficiency in statistics. Advances in cognitive psychology have extended our understanding of students' learning and broadened the range of performances that can be used to acquire evidence about the developing abilities of the students. Furthermore advanced technology has made it possible to capture complex performances of students in assessment settings. In this paper the advances in both domains will be explored in order to propose a system to monitor and diagnose students' on going learning.

  • There have been many changes over the last thirty to forty years in the way that statistics is taught and assessed. From hand calculations and assessment tasks that tested whether students have learned how to correctly answer questions of a type they had seen before, we have moved to assessments that use computers and resources available on the internet and to examinations where sheets with formulae are provided or that are open-book. These newer forms of assessment present their own challenges. Examples of tasks are given in this paper, with discussion of their implementation and appropriate references to publications in statistical education.

  • This paper describes the development and validation of the Reasoning about P-values and Statistical Significance (RPASS) scale. The RPASS was designed to support future research on students' conceptual understanding and misunderstanding of statistical significance and the effects of instructional approaches on this understanding. After unanimous expert content validation and testing, the 27-item RPASS-4 was administered across five introductory courses at California Polytechnic State University (N = 224). Respondents answered 16 of 27 items correctly, on average. Convergent and discriminant validity evidence were sufficient (N = 56). However, internal consistency reliability was low (alpha = .42, N = 224). An optimal subset of 15 items was identified with expected coefficient alpha of .66. However, some of the poorly discriminating items may be indicative of persistent misconceptions. Removing these items from the scale may not be desirable. Implications for future development and research are discussed.

  • Statistical literacy encompasses competencies regarding the use of mathematical representations and the manipulation of data through reduction. Dealing with data referring to authentic situations, basic activities of modeling are linked to this domain of statistical literacy. Based on the recently introduced German standards emphasizing the importance of representations and modeling, our study aims at assessing competencies of middle graders in German classrooms. Therefore, a pilot study with more than 180 fifth- and eight-graders in upper secondary schools was conducted with the additional aim of testing the properties of a set of assessment tasks. The results support on the one hand typical misconceptions of students and specify on the other hand the status quo of the domain of statistical literacy in question. Using Rasch-analysis we can support the hierarchical concept.

  • For any course in a student's degree program, the assessment should be part of an integrated assessment and learning package, with the components of the package combining to meet the learning objectives in a steady development of skills and operational knowledge that take account of the students' various prior and future learnings. This paper considers such a package for an introductory course in probability and distributional modelling, including its objectives with reference to the nature of statistical thinking in probabilistic and distributional modelling, and general assessment principles. A new component of assessment to strengthen the problem-solving environment and to better address some of the objectives is described, together with student and tutor feedback and student data.

  • Using a framework for assessing dimensions of understanding in statistics a series of assessment tasks were developed by the researcher to address both procedural and conceptual understanding. This paper describes these tasks, together with the results of students' performance on the tasks. It will be shown that, while some of the tasks developed did assess the dimension of knowledge which they were developed to address, and some did not, overall it was possible to develop tasks to specifically assess both procedural and conceptual knowledge in statistical inference

  • This paper reports on the implementation of the experiments we designed to assess how well our first-year students learn statistics and mathematics with electronic quizzes. It describes many issues that arose in our attempts to study the impact of such quizzes. An explanation of these issues should assist others who wish to assess the impact of technology in the classroom. The paper concludes with a preliminary analysis of the data from our experiments in fall semester of 2006 and a description of similar experiments planned for the spring semester of 2007.

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