Over the last decade, the use of real world projects in introductory statistics courses has increased in popularity. Real world projects provide students with an opportunity to learn the entire process of a statistical investigation. Such projects fit the principles of active learning well. However, due to the time and effort required by both the instructor and students, it is difficult to sustain the project activity for a long time period. Hence, the final project reports are often disappointing. Through an NSF funded project, we have constructed a real-time online database. Students collect their own data and enter it into the database. Various activities are now available at http://stat.cst.cmich.edu/statact/. We assign group projects using the data collected by the students themselves. This paper shares how the process of statistical investigation is implemented into the project by using the students' own data.
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