Student-Made Interactive Learning with Educational Songs (SMILES)

Dennis Pearl (Pennsylvania State University), Larry Lesser (University of Texas at El Paso), and John Weber (Georgia State University)

 Session Ended

Abstract

This hands-on, no-prerequisite workshop exploration of interactive songs for teaching and learning introductory statistics will follow this order:

  1. Brief discussion of the use and value of fun items, and songs in particular, in teaching introductory statistics (resources will be posted in advance).
  2. Build to progressively more interactive statistics songs that can be used in the classroom or online - and discover the new idea of Student-Made Interactive Learning with Educational Songs (SMILES) that uses content-relevant inputs from students to generate songs.
  3. Experience first-hand how a particular example of such a song could be used in an introductory statistics course (online, face-to-face, or hybrid).
  4. Whole group opportunity to discuss and critique the student experience and effectiveness for learning of an interactive song.
  5. Discuss initial implementation of SMILES in introductory statistics labs and as online activities at Penn State and Georgia State and how to move forward given lessons learned. This includes available results of two randomized experiments.
  6. Learn about the exciting multi-disciplinary VOICES initiative to foster the use of song in teaching STEM subjects.

This workshop is supported by the NSF-funded (DUE EHR 1544426/1544237/1544243) Project SMILES for introductory statistics.

Recording

Materials