Revising a Basic Statistics Course

Members of the faculty of Le Moyne College made sweeping changes in the basic statistics course provided for the social and life sciences by the Department of Mathematics. The departments involved undertook an intensive collaboration. Intense scrutiny was given to the purpose and goals of the course. The result is a course that is significantly different from its predecessor. It places more emphasis on concepts and technology. A laboratory component was added to give students experience with Minitab and messy datasets. The implementation of the course had the expected problems. These are documented along with what was done to improve the course the second time it was offered.