Ji Y. Son (California State University, Los Angeles), Immanuel Williams (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo)
Abstract
Student projects in statistics courses can be exciting and even transformative, but challenging to design. Instructors often balance competing goals: making projects manageable, motivating students, fostering equitable collaboration, and ensuring that projects target key learning outcomes. This session uses the Practicing Connections Framework, a pedagogical approach from the learning sciences, to explore how to balance these goals when creating meaningful student projects. The Practicing Connections Framework emphasizes both active student exploration and expert-like thinking. It supports productive struggle by allowing students to make their own discoveries while ensuring that their efforts focus on core statistical concepts. In well-designed projects, students have room to explore and experience challenges, but the structure helps them grapple with the right ideas, ensuring their struggles are both engaging and educationally valuable. Participants will reflect on their own experiences with student projects and analyze prototypic projects across four dimensions: manageability, motivation, equity, and learning outcomes. Through collaborative discussions and a sticky note activity, we will compare different project designs and reflect on how pedagogical decisions can help students make deeper connections between statistical concepts, real-world data, and analytical methods. This session is for instructors who want to make projects a powerful learning experience while managing the practical constraints of teaching diverse classes. No prior experience with a specific technology is required, though participants may wish to explore example projects using cloud-hosted Jupyter Notebooks (only a laptop with internet connection is necessary).