This paper is from Session 9E: Supporting teachers’ use of new statistics technology in their classrooms and development of their technological-pedagogical content knowledge

which comes under Topic 9: Technology in statistics education

Data and Chance with FATHOM — teaching material for implementing computer-based stochastic courses

Presenter

• Andreas Prömmel (Gymnasium Ernestinum Gotha , Germany)

Abstract

Students often have inadequate primary intuitions when dealing with random phenomena at the beginning of stochastic courses. This experience gap between misleading intuitions and a sustainable perspective cannot be closed by physical random experiments alone, because the feasibility is limited in classrooms. In fact, the implementation of a statistical software tool like Fathom opens new opportunities for teaching and learning stochastics. According to our research, teachers need support by didactical materials for implementing computer-based stochastic courses. In our working group we have developed, evaluated and optimized our didactical concept through various empirical studies. Our textbook “Data and Chance with Fathom”, written for high school students in grades 6-12, is the result of this work. This paper gives an introduction to the outline and the structure of the textbook. Examples and teacher experiences are discussed.