Experiences with and Assessments of an Open-Access, Online Course for Introductory Statistics

Abstract

As part of the Open Learning Initiative (OLI), Carnegie Mellon University was funded to develop a web-based introductory statistics course, openly and freely available to individual online students so they could learn effectively without an instructor. In practice, this course is often used in "blended" mode, i.e., to complement face-to-face classroom instruction. In this webinar, we will demonstrate how students interact with the course and how the different activities were designed to provide pedagogical scaffolding. We will then discuss ways in which instructors have used the online course to support their teaching and provide a demonstration of the Instructor's Learning Dashboard, a tool which continuously provides detailed feedback on students' learning and progress. We will conclude by summarizing a set of studies in which we assessed the online course's effectiveness in blended mode. Unfortunately, this webinar was not recorded due to a technical problem. We apologize.