Resource Library

June 10, 2008 Teaching and Learning webinar presented by Robert delMas, University of Minnesota and Marsha Lovett, Carnegie Mellon University and hosted by Jackie Miller, The Ohio State University. There is a large body of research on the mechanisms underlying student learning. This webinar explores four principles distilled from this research - the role of prior knowledge, how students organize knowledge, meaningful engagement, and goal-directed practice and feedback - and illustrate their application in the teaching of statistics. A more detailed example is given to show how these principles can be integrated to develop and support our students' conceptual understanding.

February 12, 2008 Teaching and Learning webinar presented by Christopher J. Malone, Winona State University and hosted by Jackie Miller, The Ohio State University. The procedural steps involved in completing a statistical investigation are often discussed in an introductory statistics course. For example, students usually gain knowledge about developing an appropriate research question, performing appropriate descriptive and graphical summaries, completing the necessary inferential procedures, and communicating the results of such an analysis. The traditional sequencing of topics in an introductory course places statistical inference near the end. As a result, students have limited opportunities to perform a complete statistical investigation. In this webinar, Dr. Malone proposes a new sequencing of topics that may enhance students' ability to perform a complete statistical investigation from beginning to end.

January 8, 2008 Teaching and Learning webinar presented by Dennis Pearl, The Ohio State University and hosted by Jackie Miller, The Ohio State University. This presentation describes the "Buffet" method for teaching multi-section courses. In this method, students are offered a choice of content delivery strategies designed to match different individual learning styles. The choice is exercised through an on-line "contract" entered into by students at the beginning of the term. The webinar describes the Ohio State experiences with the buffet strategy and discusses how key elements of the strategy can also be adapted to smaller classes to improve student learning.

November 13, 2007 Teaching and Learning webinar presented by Michael Rodriguez and Andrew Zieffler, University of Minnesota, ad hosted by Jackie Miller, The Ohio State University. This webinar includes an introduction to the idea of assessment for learning - assessments that support learning, enhance learning, and provides additional learning opportunities that support instruction. Several fundamental measurement tools are described to support the development of effective assessments that work.

July 10, 2007 Teaching & Learning Webinar presented by Larry Lesser, University of Texas at El Paso, and hosted by Jackie Miler, The Ohio State University. Drawing from (and expanding upon) his article in the March 2007 Journal of Statistics Education, Larry Lesser discusses and invite discussion about examples, resources and pedagogy associated with this meaningful way of engaging students in the statistics classroom.

April 10, 2007 webinar presented by Maria C. Pruchnicki, The Ohio State University, and hosted by Jackie Miller, The Ohio State University. Distance education and online learning opportunities, collectively known as "e-learning", are becoming increasingly used in higher education. Nationally, online enrollment increased to 3.2 million students in 2005, compared to 2.3 million in 2004. Furthermore, nearly 60% of higher education institutions identify e-learning as part of their long-term education strategy. Newer educational technologies including course management systems and Internet-based conferencing software can be used to both deliver content and engage participants as part of a social learning community. However, even experienced faculty can face pedagogical and operational challenges as they transition to the online environment. This interactive presentation discusses a systematic approach to developing web-based instruction, with an Ohio State University experience as a case example.

This visualization activity combines student data collection with the use of an applet to enhance the understanding of the distributions of slope and intercept in simple linear regression models. The applet simulates a linear regression plot and the corresponding intercept and slope histograms. The program allows the user to change settings such as slope, standard deviation, sample size, and more. Students will then see theoretical distributions of the slope and intercept and how they compare to the histograms generated by the simulated linear regression lines.

This activity illustrates the convergence of long run relative frequency to the true probability. The psychic ability of a student from the class is studied using an applet. The student is asked to repeatedly guess the outcome of a virtual coin toss. The instructor enters the student's guesses and the applet plots the percentage of correct answers versus the number of attempts. With the applet, many guesses can be entered very quickly. If the student is truly a psychic, the percentage correct will converge to a value above 0.5.

This group activity illustrates the concepts of size and power of a test through simulation. Students simulate binomial data by repeatedly rolling a ten-sided die, and they use their simulated data to estimate the size of a binomial test. They carry out further simulations to estimate the power of the test. After pooling their data with that of other groups, they construct a power curve. A theoretical power curve is also constructed, and the students discuss why there are differences between the expected and estimated curves. Key words: Power, size, hypothesis testing, binomial distribution

This lecture example reviews the concept of CIs and their relationship to P values. Tables are provided in pdf format.