This paper is from Session 10A: Collaboration between industries/international-connections and university-level education:
which comes under Topic 10: Organisations and collaboration in statistics education
Paper 10A2 (Tuesday 10th, 11:00-12:30)
Do you have experience? Incorporating Experiential Learning Opportunities into Statistics Education is Messy but Important
Presenter
- Nathan Taback (University of Toronto, Canada)
Abstract
“If data analysis is to be helpful and useful, it must be practiced.” (Tukey, 1962) Ideally all students would have experiential learning opportunities during their statistics degrees. Incorporating experiential learning opportunities into a course is messy. Experiential learning in data analysis often involves bringing collaborators from industry or other academic problems into the classroom. Aligning learning outcomes of a course and managing a collaborator’s expectations presents unique challenges for an instructor. Contests, such as the American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFest, offer an opportunity for a large number of students to have meaningful co-curricular experiential learning opportunities. I will discuss principles of experiential learning in statistics education, and experiences working with industry and academia to bring experiential learning opportunities into the classroom.