By Ella Burnham, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Information
In order to better address the increased enrollment in a non-calculus based introductory statistics course, a large public Midwestern University recently developed a distance intro course. These distance courses have 90 students each, and the course is taken by students from across campus who are looking to fulfill a quantitative reasoning general education requirement. This course focuses on simulation-based inference and follows the 6 recommendations from GAISE (GAISE College Report ASA Revision Committee, 2016). The goal of this poster is to discuss the design of the course and selected course activities, as well as share preliminary results of student achievement measures and Distance Education and Technological Advancements (DETA) survey subscales. More specifically, I will discuss how discussion boards and group work were used to encourage student-student interaction and instructor-student interaction. I will also discuss how an article critique assignment was used to give students practice evaluating scientific results as presented in the popular press, which could be implemented in both online and face-to-face intro courses. The course activities I’ll discuss require group work, and the DETA survey subscales focus on active learning behaviors and interactivity, allowing us to explore the effectiveness of the activities. The research conducted on this course has IRB approval.