The Effect of Student-Driven Projects on the Development of Statistical Reasoning

• Activity Number: 419
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 2, 2011 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Melissa M. Sovak*+
• Companies: California University of Pennsylvania
• Keywords: Statistics Education ; Projects ; Teaching

Abstract

Research has shown that passing an introductory statistics course does not imply that a student can reason statistically. Since there is minimal experimental evidence in this area, the purpose of this study was to produce quantitative data from a designed comparative study to explore the effectiveness of a semester-long project in enhancing students' statistical reasoning abilities along with providing a template for these projects. The project was designed to target the areas of distributions, probability and inference. The study included two experimental sections and five control sections. All sections completed both a pre-test and post-test designed to measure reasoning ability. Analysis of the data was completed using ANCOVA, contingency tables and a qualitative analysis to investigate the effect of the project on the development of statistical reasoning. Analysis of the data indicated that project participants had higher learning gains overall and a more enjoyable experience in their statistics course when compared with students not participating in the project. These results indicate that projects are a valuable teaching technique for introductory statistics courses.