The use of a Multimedia Tool in Teaching Factor Analysis to Business School Students. Is there a Statistical Significant Improvement?

Teaching factor analysis to non scientific audience is not easy. These methods should be taught with rigor so that students develop the capacity of interpreting correctly the results of the statistical analysis. But it can not be taught in a too theoretical way because it would be rejected by students who often have a difficult relationship with mathematics (Dassonville et Hahn, 1999). Development of technology, especially multimedia, allowed to consider conception of new pedagogical tools that could improve learning (Legros, 1997). But we know that human mediation is an essential part of the process of knowledge construction (Tall, 1994; Linard, 1998). So, the question of the position of such tools in a pedagogical programme is still fundamental. It is why the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry supported a research project on learning Principal Components Analysis (PCA). The first step of this project was to create a multimedia tool (Dassonville, 1997). The second step was to evaluate the efficiency of the tool.<br><br>In our presentation, we will first say a few words about teaching of statistics in French Business schools. Then describe shortly the pedagogical programme we experimented at Ecole Sup&Egrave;rieure de Commerce de Paris (ESCP), integrating the multimedia tool. Then we will present the main results of the evaluation of this tool's efficiency we conducted in 1998/99.