Although graduate students in education are frequently required to write papers throughout their<br>coursework, they typically have limited experience in communicating in the language of statistics, both<br>verbally and in written form. To succeed in their future careers, students must be provided with<br>opportunities to develop deep understandings of concepts, develop reasoning skills, and become familiar<br>with verbalizing and writing about statistics. The instructional approach described here spans the entire<br>semester of a statistics course and consists of several aspects including cognitively rich individual<br>assignments, small group activities, and a student-led scoring activity. To demonstrate the impact of this<br>approach on student learning, qualitative and quantitative data were collected from students in two<br>statistics courses. Several assessments indicate improvement in students' reasoning and understanding,<br>written and verbal communication, and confidence.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education