Demonstrating an Interactive Song for Learning Introductory Statistics
This video poster shares a walk-through talk-aloud demo of an interactive song, starting with the pre-song prompts the user responds to that yield inserted words in the completed song, roughly in the style of the Mad Libs word template game. Some of the student inputs involve making conceptual connections while others involve providing context or examples. With the support of our NSF-funded Project SMILES (Student Made Interactive Learning with Educational Songs for introductory statistics, as mentioned in the VOICES presentation by our fellow SMILES PI Larry Lesser), some two dozen interactive songs and a computer auto-grading interface were created and the effectiveness of the innovation for reducing college students' statistics anxiety and increasing their learning is currently being assessed with randomized experiments. We will touch on challenges and tradeoffs we have had to negotiate (with the help of Penn State's Bob Carey and University of Texas at El Paso's Dominic Dousa and Steve Haddad) in terms of aesthetics, pedagogy, and technology. We will also provide data from our spring and summer 2017 pilot tests on the student reactions to the innovation and we welcome your constructive feedback as well!