From classroom to online teaching: experiences in improving statistics education
by
Anne Porter
School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics, University of Wollongong

This talk examines various aspects of improving statistical education: curriculum, teaching practices, forms of assessment, provision of a learning framework and reflective practice. It draws on the experiences (and video clips) of teaching a small preparatory statistics class and a large introductory statistics class (300 students). As a first step toward improving student learning the curriculum has been developed and refined so as to provide a clear focus on variability. In both classrooms an activity based approach to learning has been implemented, incorporating sights, sounds, movement, quiet and live shows. Assessment practices have been chosen so as to enhance the learning experience and to facilitate reflective practice by both students and lecturer. Improving attitudes toward learning has involved the incorporation of an explicit learning framework, within which statistics is learned. To enable this highly interactive approach to teaching on-line support resources were developed, but in so doing provided the opportunity for students to learn from the online resources alone. In so providing the issue of improving the quality of online materials has become an issue. This move from teaching classes to delivery online has led to a teacher feeling the constraints of translating activity based programs to technologically based programs. In the talk I discuss possible ways enriching on-line resources, so that the learning experience is not second to that of the classroom.

Date received: September 11, 2001

Copyright © 2001 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caib-02.