Introductory Statistics Education and the National Science Foundation

This paper describes 27 National Science Foundation supported grant projects that have innovations designed to improve teaching and learning in introductory statistics courses. The characteristics of these projects are compared with the six recommendations given in the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) College Report 2005 for teaching an introductory course in statistics. Through this analysis, we are able to see how NSF-supported introductory statistics education projects during the last decade achieve the GAISE ideals. Thus, materials developed from many of these projects provide resources for first steps in implementing GAISE recommendations.