The Design and Evaluation of Computer-Assisted Instruction on Biostatistics: an Example of Central Limit Theorem

• Activity Number: 197
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 7, 2006 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Teaching Statistics in the Health Sciences
• Author(s): Lai-Chu See*+ and Yu Hsuan Huang and Yi Hua Chang and Pei-I Peng
• Companies: Chang Gung University and Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University and Chang Gung University
• Keywords: central limit theorem ; Flash animation ; computer-assisted instruction ; learning effect

Abstract

The aims of this study were to design a computer-assisted instruction (CAI) of the topic of Central Limit Theorem and evaluate its learning effect. Class A students were given CAI first and followed by lecture; class B students were given lecture first and followed by CAI. Three quizzes were given before and after teaching, respectively. Two classes of graduate nursing students, 17 in class A and 32 in class B, participated in September 2005. On post-test1, class A (61.8% correction) did slightly worse than class B (65.0%) (p=.6301). Both classes showed a significant gain in the second score (18.2% for class A, 7.5% for class B). For within group comparison, only class B students showed significantly higher scores in CAI than those in lecture. 43.8% of class B students preferred lecture followed by CAI, and two-thirds of class A preferred CAI followed by lecture.