Webinars

"Which Traits Attract Women: Appearance, Intelligence, Wealth, or Strength?" was the first place winner of the Undergraduate Statistics Class Project Competition. Project mentor, Nathan Tintle of Dordt College, will briefly discuss the class assignment underlying the project and how he handles the project and the competition. Joshua Nymeyer, Dordt College, the team leader from the this class project will present their work.

This webinar will describe the motivation and summarize the major points of a recently released report on connecting research and practice in statistics education. The report seeks to foster productivity and coherence in statistics education research by providing a portal to the statistics education literature, guidance on important priorities in the field, and the impetus for development and wide use of instruments needed to address fundamental questions in the field.

We have developed a set of freely available web-based apps called StatKey (lock5stat.com/statkey) for supporting statistics courses that use modern simulation methods (such as bootstrap intervals and randomization tests) to introduce the core ideas of statistical inference. In this webinar we demonstrate the main features of StatKey and discuss how it can be used to make these methods easily accessible and understandable for students with a wide variety of backgrounds. Although StatKey's built-in examples are coordinated with the Wiley text Statistics: Unlocking the Power of Data, the tools allow students and instructors to input and analyze their own data and can be used with any course seeking to give students experience with what many people call the "next big thing" in statistics education.

In this webinar, we discuss the rationale and results for an exploratory survey on (N = 249) statistics instructors' use of fun, including their motivations, hesitations, and awareness of resources. Respondents were attendees at the 2011 United States Conference on Teaching Statistics and 16 completed phone interviews after the conference.

Our presentation will highlight the needs in statistics education from the perspective of client disciplines based on the use of statistics in teaching and research in various academic affiliations. This information will cultivate discussion on how to use the information to guide curriculum development in introductory statistics. As a result of this study, a large data set was compiled that can be used in the classroom for students to explore. A demonstration of how to access and use the data set in class will be given.

Teaching Principles of One-Way Analysis of Variance Using M&M's Candy I present an active learning classroom exercise illustrating essential principles of one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) methods. The exercise is easily conducted by the instructor and is instructive (as well as enjoyable) for the students. This is conducive for demonstrating many theoretical and practical issues related to ANOVA and lends itself to multiple possible configurations of ANOVA results, leading to rich classroom discussion and deeper student understanding of real-world applications of the methods. The Cleveland Clinic Statistical Education Dataset Repository: Examples and more Examples Examples are highly sought by both students and teachers. This is particularly true as many statistical instructors aim to engage their students and increase active participation. While simulated datasets are functional, they lack real perspective and the intricacies of actual data. Described is the creation of a new web-based statistical educational resource. This growing dataset repository presents raw data from real medical studies and offers (a) a vignette summarizing the study, research question and study design; (b) a data dictionary with clear documentation of variables and codes; (c) a complete citation for the associated study publication; and (d) a variety of data formats compatible with the majority of statistical packages.

Lisa Dierker will offer reflections on the pedagogical design and experience of teaching her NSF-funded, passion-driven, project-based introductory statistics course both on campus, at Wesleyan University, and within the Massive Open On-line Course (MOOC) environment. www.wesleyan.edu/qac/curriculum

Randomization tests are growing in popularity as an alternative to traditional tests, but also as a way to help students to understand the logic of inference. In this webinar, we will use Fathom software and online applets to introduce inference for the slope of a least-squares regression line. Come find out if seat location affects performance in a statistics class and if adding additional Mentos to a bottle of Diet Coke makes a bigger mess.

In this webinar I will discuss my Coursera class "Data Analysis" that was offered for free. I will discuss the course and educational objectives, the platform, and issues that arise when scaling statistics education to a large audience.

Technological advances in recent years have changed the possibilities for incorporating non-traditional learning approaches into the classroom. In this webinar we will demonstrate use of a 3-D game, TigerStat, for teaching statistics. In addition to demonstrating the game, we will present the first investigative lab module (lab) developed for teaching simple linear regression in an introductory statistics course. The lab emphasizes statistical thinking and the process of scientific inquiry to students using the game as a part of the data collection effort. The game-based lab presents a research question in the context of a case study and encourages students to follow a complete process of statistical analysis. These labs are designed to 1) foster a sense of engagement, 2) have a low threat of failure early on but create a challenging environment that grows with the students' knowledge, 3) create realistic, adaptable, and straightforward models representing current research in a variety of disciplines, and 4) provide an intrinsic motivation for students to want to learn. The game and lab materials were developed as part of NSF grant TUES DUE #1043814 with co-PI Shonda Kuiper, Grinnell College, and software development by Tietronix Software.