Diversity in Project-Based Learning Strategy in Undergraduate Statistics Education

• Activity Number: 27 - SPEED: Statistical Learning and Data Challenge Part 1
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 7, 2022 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and Data Science Education
• Author(s): Shurong Fang* and Lisa Dierker
• Companies: John Carroll University and Wesleyan University
• Keywords: Diversity; Project-Based Learning; Under-representative; Curriculum; Undergraduate Statistics Education

Abstract

Diversity has various meanings to different individuals based on their respective background. As our data-driven and tech-saturated world has been expended to our daily life, it is necessary and important to accommodate our current curriculum for diverse students. A project-based learning (PBL) strategy has been adopted in Undergraduate Statistics Education curriculum. We conduct an exploratory study on diversity in PBL for undergraduate statistics education through the pre- and post-surveys collected from more than 70 educational settings across the country from 2018 to 2021. We compare student’s learning experience, attitudes, and the interest in future experiences with data based on their racial background and first generation status. Our goal is to examine the efficiency of the PBL for diverse students, especially for under-representative students, in undergraduate statistics education.