Literature Index

This article discusses an active learning technique that can be easily incorporated into a variety of introductory statistics classes to demonstrate purely subjective and statistical confidence intervals.

This paper describes two innovative online introductory statistics courses that utilize technology to create unique interactive learning environments. In these courses, technology is used to enable students to collaborate and learn from each other, in addition to learning from required course materials and the instructor. Technology is also introduced into the courses as a way to better illustrate important statistical concepts and provide students with tools to describe and analyze data. In this paper, special attention is paid to the way in which the GAISE recommendations have been implemented in one key component of the online courses: small-group discussion. Evaluative data gathered from students is used to describe how students perceive the discussion component of the courses, as well as how desired learning outcomes are being achieved. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned from teaching an online statistics course, and implications for future development of online staiststics courses.

The aim of this paper is to present the concept of an 'instrumental' obstacle. In French agricultural education, the spreadsheet is often used as a tool or "artefact" in statistics teaching. Some obstacles to learning appear due to the use of this instrument. Difficulties appear during the learning of analysis of variance by students, who are not trained mathematicians. The concept of average however, which might have been regarded as unproblematic, caused surprising difficulties during one step in the algorithm for analysis of variance. The notion of 'instrumental' obstacle seems to be pertinent in order to analyse this phenomenon. This kind of obstacle is different from those presented by the internal constraints of the artefact. This study confirms that students have yet some problems with the notion of average, but that with spreadsheet use they become aware of this difficulty.

This paper describes an interactive Web-based tutorial that supplements instruction on statistical power. This freely available tutorial provides several interactive exercises that guide students as they draw multiple samples from various populations and compare results for populations with differing parameters (for example, small standard deviation versus large standard deviation). The tutorial assignment includes diagnostic multiple-choice questions with feedback addressing misconceptions, and follow-up questions suitable for grading. The sampling exercises utilize an interactive Java applet that graphically demonstrates relationships between statistical power and effect size, null and alternative populations and sampling distributions, and Type I and II error rates. The applet allows students to manipulate the mean and standard deviation of populations, sample sizes, and Type I error rate. Students (n = 84) enrolled in introductory and intermediate statistics courses overwhelmingly rated the tutorial as clear, useful, easy to use, and they reported increased comfort with the topic of statistical power after using the tutorial. Students who used the tutorial outperformed those who did not use the tutorial on a final exam question measuring knowledge of the factors influencing statistical power.