Initial Findings About Graduate Teaching Assistants' Training Needs to Foster Active Learning in Statistics

• Activity Number: 179 - Contributed Poster Presentations: Section on Statistical Education
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, July 31, 2017 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Kristen Roland* and Jennifer Kaplan
• Companies: and University of Georgia
• Keywords: graduate teaching assistant ; professional development ; introductory statistics ; active learning

Abstract

As enrollment in introductory statistics courses across the country rises, more instructors for these courses are needed. Many statistics courses are now taught by Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs). Little is known, however, about the training needs of GTAs to foster active learning and promote conceptual understanding, critical recommendations of the GAISE guidelines to improve undergraduate learning in statistics. This poster will discuss some active learning activities and the corresponding GTA training program we have developed for our introductory statistics course. We will discuss the activities and the lessons learned about GTA development through the two-year pilot program. Specifically, we have found that GTAs struggle with connecting their theoretical knowledge to the conceptual ideas that are the focus of the new activities. This poster will focus on changes in GTAs conceptual understanding and ability to facilitate activities focused on the conceptual understanding of confidence intervals for on population proportion. Research for this poster has been funded by NSF (DUE 1504587).