Using Projects To Encourage Statistical Thinking

For the last decade, internationally, there have been calls for reform in statistics education. These calls for reform have emphasised that teaching should use real data, active learning, technological tools and statistical thinking. A way of incorporating all these aspects into a statistics course is through the use of projects. This paper will summarise the calls for reform and the use of projects by others along with projects that have been used by the author in courses that he teaches in experimental design and multiple regression. The emphasis here has been to include a full problem solving cycle, from problem definition to communicating findings and reflecting on the process. Feedback from the students will be included.