Enhancing the link between statistics and mineral processing through project based learning.


Book: 
Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference On Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-7), Salvador, Brazil.
Authors: 
Periasamy, J.
Editors: 
Rossman, A., & Chance, B.
Category: 
Year: 
2006
Publisher: 
Voorburg, The Netherlands: International Statistical Institute.
URL: 
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/publications/17/2C1_PERI.pdf
Abstract: 

This paper is a culmination of the study carried out after using project work as an intervention to enhance the learning of statistics as a service subject. It discusses how a project encompassing real-world problems directly relevant to the learners chosen career-path helps in motivating and sustaining the students' quest for learning statistics. The sample group comprised of learners studying towards the Diploma in Extraction Metallurgy and the project work was centred on the main-stream course Mineral Processing. This project was based on actual experiments conducted by learners in their Mineral Processing course so that learners could see the relevance of applied statistics to main-stream courses. The learners' performance was tracked throughout this study.

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