| Course | Learning goals | New Assessments | Improved Methods |
|---|---|---|---|
| STAT 200: Elementary Statistics for Applications ('07 start) Faculty: B. Dunham, E. Yu, N. Heckman STLF: Gaitri Yapa  STAT 200 Learning Outcomes (learning goals) |
Course-level goals: complete
Topic-level goals: complete Ongoing discussion for improvement, with faculty who are/will be teaching for the first time. |
Compared the effectiveness of two different types of lab in helping students understand sampling distributions.
On-going study to assess what students retain from STAT 200 several months after they have completed the course. A midterm exam assessment question given. Intervention used to address misconception identified in midterm exam. Planning final exam assessment question that targets the same misconception. A mid-course survey (paper based, not for credit) was given (very low response rate, but those who responded provided very useful comments). Planning to give an online survey (for credit) next term to increase responses. Planning post course knowledge retention surveys. |
Extensive use of clickers to stimulate class discussion. More assigned homework Labs improved to focus on key concepts that learners typically find difficult. Used simpler marking methods to reduce assignment marking turnaround time to about one week. Planning to increase homework frequency further to engage students with course content more often. Planning to use clicker questions in a section that will be taught by a faculty member who has not used clickers before. |
| STAT 241/251: Elementary Statistics (Sept '11 start) Faculty: Y. Lim STLF: Gaitri Yapa |
Course-level goals: first draft Topic-level goals: first draft |
A midterm exam assessment question given. Intervention used to address misconception identified in midterm exam. Planning final exam assessment question that targets the same misconception. A mid-course survey (online, for credit) was given. Approximately 80% responded (total enrolled: 236). Planning two mid course online surveys (for credit)for next term to identify difficulties. Planning post course knowledge retention surveys. |
Context rich problems included in assignments. Planning to use context rich problems in final exam. Planning to increase homework frequency further to engage students with course content more often. Planning to revise lab pre-reading to include objectives and emphasize use of software as a tool for Statistical analysis. (Currently working on labs 1 & 2). Planning to implement short quizzes on pre-reading material at start of labs. Planning to have a de-briefing at end of labs by TAs that includes participation by randomly chosen student(s). Planning to pre-select lab groups to maximize cooperative learning. Planning to use TA time for office hours to help answer student questions (currently no regular office hours, except on the three weeks that have no labs). |
| STAT 302: Introduction to Probability (Sept '11 start) Faculty: E. Yu STLF: Gaitri Yapa |
Course-level goals: first draft
Topic-level goals: first draft |
Planning to give midterm and final exam assessment questions. Planning to give a mid-course survey. |
Post course knowledge retention survey conducted (8 participants). Ongoing discussion on how to involve students from current term (taught by Math Dept) in the post course survey. Planning to increase homework frequency. Planning two in-class activities to target resolving currently observed misconceptions. Ongoing discussion on using pop quizzes to motivate students to keep up with course content, as there will be no clicker questions until a later term. |
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Poster: CWSEI Projects in the Department of Statistics — Bruce Dunham, Rebekah Mohr, & Eugenia Yu STAT 100 – Statistical Thinking: A rather novel introductory course in the discipline, STAT 100 involves six "modules", each on a different theme in statistical science accessible to learners who have not had previous exposure to the discipline. The course was offered for the second time in 2009, and after the first run it was decided by the teaching team (of five instructors) that clickers would be used in future to help improve student engagement. This idea was implemented, and in-house training and support was offered by Eugenia Yu. In total about half of the faculty in the department now have used clickers in their teaching. STAT 335 – Statistics in Quality Assurance: This course was revived in 2008, having not been offered for some years. The new incarnation of the course was enhanced using CWSEI methodology. In particular: STAT 443 – Time Series and Forecasting: Having been twice previously offered as a "topics" course, this "new" addition to the department's upper-level offerings was improved this year by instruction that placed less emphasis on the traditional lecture. In a similar fashion to STAT 335, students worked in groups on activities within the classes, with instructor support. Often concepts were introduced informally in an activity before a more formal presentation of the idea was provided in a short lecture. Solutions to an in-class activity were posted shortly after the class for timely feedback. As measured by student performance and satisfaction, this change in instruction style has been successful. |
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