This paper is from Session 4E: We know you need to know statistics, do you?

which comes under Topic 4: Statistics education at the post-secondary level

A comparison of attitudes between traditional and hands-on classes in an introductory statistics course

Presenter

• Carl Lee (Central Michigan University, United States)

Co-authors

• Aklilu Zeleke (Michigan State University, United States)
• Chin-I Cheng (Central Michigan University, United States)
• Jennifer Daniels (Central Michigan University, United States)
• Kundana Divi (Central Michigan University, United States)

Abstract

In this paper we present a comparison study of students’ attitudes toward statistics. We administered attitude surveys to three sections of an introductory statistics course. Two of these sections were small classes, taught by a “traditional” lecture based format. The third section was a large class, taught using a “hands-on” active-learning approach. The surveys collected responses on factors such as Learning Styles, Affect, Cognitive Competence, Value and Difficulty. The survey responses were used to compare students’ attitude towards statistics between the two class formats.