Dear Introductory Statistics Instructors,

I’m currently developing an assessment tool designed to measure how well students understand when and how to use statistical inference in novel problem contexts after completing an introductory course in statistical inference.

If you are a post-secondary introductory statistics instructor, I’m writing to ask for your help to pilot the Introductory Statistics Transfer of Understanding and Discernment Outcomes (I-STUDIO) assessment.  The I-STUDIO assessment is designed to present students with novel problem contexts and requires students to discern between problems that would or would not benefit from statistical inference, and then asks them to explain how they would solve each problem.  

I am developing this assessment for my dissertation research at the University of Minnesota, where I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Educational Psychology with a concentration in Statistics Education working under the supervision of my co-advisers, Joan Garfield and Bob delMas.  

The I-STUDIO assessment is designed to accommodate a wide variety of introductory statistics curricula and could be used for a variety of purposes.  Statistics instructors could use the results from the I-STUDIO assessment to refine curriculum decisions, and researchers could use it as a tool to compare and contrast outcomes of disparate curricula as a measure of the propensity of students to appropriately transfer learning to novel applications.

I am requesting your help at this time to field test the assessment with your students. The data gathered will be used to evaluate the validity and reliability of the I-STUDIO assessment. I am searching for 6-8 class sections that represent a diverse mix of curricula and institutions.

If you participate, I will provide summary data that describes the results for your students as well as a summary of the results collected from other institutions for comparison upon request. You can administer the I-STUDIO assessment to your students outside of class, though I ask that they work independently.  Students will complete the assessment using a web-based interface called Qualtrics, and you will receive your students’ responses after they complete the assessment.

Ideally, I would like you to administer the I-STUDIO assessment near the end of the current academic term.

If you are interested, please contact me at beckm109@umn.edu by April 15, 2015 with the following information:
-        number of students in your class;
-        institution name;
-        primary textbook.

I will then send you a copy of the I-STUDIO assessment and provide additional information.  I thank you for your consideration, and would look forward to partnering with you during this phase of my research.

Sincerely,

Matt Beckman
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Educational Psychology
University of Minnesota