1E: Active learning in online/hybrid introductory statistics courses: exploring collaborative keys (Room 105)

Abstract

Online and hybrid courses are growing in popularity but face the challenge of engaging students actively in the learning process. This session introduces Collaborative Keys (CKs), a novel pedagogical tool in which students asynchronously work together to create an answer key with solutions for each question on an assignment. CKs can build upon a cooperative learning structure, and appear to actively engage students while avoiding many of the shortcomings of discussion forums and other tools that are often used in online and hybrid courses to try to promote engagement. The primary goals of this session are that participants will be able to experience what it might be like for students to complete a CK, and that participants will have the opportunity to consider and discuss the possible advantages and disadvantages of incorporating this tool into their courses. Participants will work together to complete a CK, and discussion will follow. As time allows, we will offer preliminary results of research we are conducting to explore how students engage with each other while using the tool, and invite participants to engage in mock-research by qualitatively coding and analyzing discourse in real collaborative keys that have been completed by introductory statistics students. Knowledge of basic inferential statistics (that which is typical in most introductory statistics courses) is helpful but not required. An electronic device with access to google docs is also helpful but not required.