WHAT'S NEW AT CAUSEweb?
(Roger Woodard)

CAUSEweb Chooses Classics Award Winner

CAUSEweb/MERLOT Statistics chooses an outstanding resource to receive the MERLOT Classics Award. This year the award goes to Introduction to Sampling Distributions of the Mean by Dr. Dale Berger of the Claremont Graduate University. This online tutorial is part of the Web Interface for Statistics Education (WISE). This resource was chosen because of the importance of its topic and because of the supporting materials that are included with the tutorial. The tutorial exposes students to sampling distributions, one of the most important topics in introductory statistics. The tutorial has students work through an interactive activity that includes the use of a Java applet. The tutorial includes both online and printable versions of student worksheets, has detailed learning goals, and instructor notes. The availability of these supporting materials is a rarity among online resources. Congratulations to Dr. Berger and his team.

Congratulations to Jackie Miller, MERLOT Volunteer of the Year Award

Dr. Jackie Miller has received the MERLOT Volunteer of the Year Award. Dr. Miller is a volunteer peer reviewer for MERLOT Statistics/CAUSEweb. Dr. Miller is a Statistics Education Specialist at the Ohio State University. She has been very active in peer reviewing materials for MERLOT and has also been very useful in training new peer reviewers. Dr. Miller also coordinates the CAUSEweb webinar series, which has allows authors to present their resources in an online interactive way. Congratulations Dr. Miller!

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CAUSE UPDATE
(Dennis Pearl)

The Cause Charter is Signed.

It's now official. The charter of the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education was signed on March 24, 2006, at the CAUSE spring meeting. The charter defines the roles of the Board of Directors, the Executive Director, Associate Directors, and membership. Our thanks go to Dick Schaeffer who spearheaded the drive to produce a far-sighted document that will facilitate our continued growth as an organization. You can see the charter here.

Sing Along with CAUSE!

Larry Lesser has integrated an extensive and growing collection of statistics songs into the fun section of CAUSEweb - have a look here. You can even download the lyrics and music for many of the songs onto your iPod. Also, watch Larry's webinar on how to effectively use humor in the classroom.

Juha Puranen's List of Links Moves to CAUSEweb

For many years Juha Puranen at the University of Helsinki maintained one of the most comprehensive lists of statistics education links on the Internet. His list still draws about a thousand visitors per month but has not been updated since 2004. Now, Juha has kindly agreed to move the list to CAUSEweb.org to be developed and maintained. CAUSE is happy to facilitate this work. You can watch our progress over the summer here as we repair broken links, update the annotations, and merge the list into CAUSEweb.

Next CAUSE Webinar is June 13th.

CAUSE has now successfully hosted five Webinars since we began this exciting new activity in January. A Webinar is a web-based seminar where participants watch presentations on their computer while joining in the conversation via phone and by sharing the work on their own screen. CAUSE hosts Webinars on the second Tuesday of each month. There is no cost to participate, but we do ask that you register. You will need internet access and a telephone. CAUSE covers the cost of the connections through the ReadyTalk conferencing system. The next Webinar, on June 13th from 2:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EDT, will feature Roger Woodard from the University of North Carolina and Ginger Rowell from Middle Tennessee State who will present a basic framework that instructors can use to plan and implement the use of online materials in the classroom.

You can sign-up for this free activity and find recordings of our previous Webinars.

For more information on webinars and other CAUSE activities, contact Dennis Pearl at dkp@stat.osu.edu

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CAUSE OFFERS TWO SUMMER WORKSHOPS
(Jean Scott)

Thanks to the National Science Foundation, CAUSE will be offering two summer workshops. There is no registration fee or cost for materials, but early registration for these opportunities is encouraged. Lodging will be provided for those participants who live further than 30 miles from the workshop location. Additional details are available on our workshop registration website.

Workshop on Teaching Introductory Statistics to be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

CAUSE in conjunction with the Medical College of Wisconsin is sponsoring a 4 day workshop (July 10-13). This workshop, led by Roger Woodard (North Carolina State University), Ginger Rowell (Middle Tennessee State University) and Bob delMas (University of Minnesota), will expose participants to current ideas in teaching and planning a course on introductory statistics.

Statistics Workshop for Math Educators to be held in Moraga, California.

CAUSE in conjunction with St. Mary's College of California is sponsoring a workshop aimed at those who are preparing K-12 teachers of statistics, probability and data analysis. The two-day workshop will explore current national, state and local standards for statistics, as well as the guidelines for the teaching of statistics approved by the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). Also, resources available to teachers and active learning strategies at all levels will be demonstrated and discussed. This workshop will be offered twice, on July 24 & 25 and on July 27 & 28. Registrants may select which session they would prefer to attend. This workshop will be led by Brian Jerksy (St. Mary's College) and Rob Gould (UCLA).

USCOTS 2007 - MAY 17 - 19, 2007
(Jean Scott)

The second United States Conference on Teaching Statistics will be held May 17-19, 2007 in Columbus, Ohio. It will be hosted by CAUSE, the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education.

Mark your calendar! USCOTS 2007 will feature a great line-up of speakers including Jessica Utts (University of California at Davis), Paul Velleman (Cornell University), Allan Rossman (California Polytecnic State University), Mike Shaughnessy (Portland State University) and Dick DeVeaux (Williams College).

Registration will begin in June 2006. Click here for more information.

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STATISTICS EDUCATION RESEARCH WORKSHOP
(Joan Garfield)

A workshop was held on March 25, 2006 at the Ohio State University, following a one-day CAUSE meeting. This workshop was sponsored by the INQUERI project at OSU. About 25 statistic educators and 4 graduate students attended the workshop.

The goal of this one-day workshop was to design and develop an infrastructure to facilitate and promote statistics education research at the college level. This will involve a system of online testing that creates a national database with data on important student outcomes as well as instructional variables. We discussed in large and small groups issues related to instruments that exist or need to be created in three main areas:

• Cognitive outcomes; what is needed to measure learning outcomes (including but not limited to the current instruments developed as online tests as part of the ARTIST project)
• Affective outcomes: what is needed to measure about non-cognitive student outcomes in addition to the Schau's Students Attitudes toward Statistics Test (SATS), which is already online as part of the ARTIST project.
• Student, instructor, and instructional characteristics: what is needed to be measured in order to study factors that affect student cognitive and affective outcomes.

Participants at the workshop also discussed practical issues involving getting faculty and students from many institutions involved in this new project, along with the many positive outcomes that will result from such a collaboration.

For more information, please contact Joan Garfield at jbg@umn.edu.

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USCOTS E-NEWS is published quarterly by CAUSE, the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (www.causeweb.org).

Send your comments on USCOTS E-NEWS to rumsey@stat.osu.edu.

If you would like to cancel your subscription, or wish to be added to our list, please email Jean (Demaree) Scott at jscott@stat.osu.edu.