Although project work involving analysis and interpretation of real data is important when<br>students are learning statistics, there is an important role for short exercises to help learn specific<br>statistical skills. Computer-based exercises can be much richer than exercises in paper-based<br>textbooks but existing resources do not make full use of the medium. The format can involve<br>multiple-choice, numerical answers, interaction with diagrams (such as sketching a histogram) or<br>a combination of these, possibly in sequence. The exercise can analyse the student response and<br>give helpful hints and feedback about different types of incorrect answer. Random generation of<br>similar questions in an exercise can allow repeated attempts until skills are mastered. Some<br>principles are given for the design of computer-based exercises and a set of nine exercises about<br>normal distributions is described.
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