P2-03: Project SMILES: Student-Made Interactive Learning with Educational Songs in Introductory Statistics


By John Weber (Perimeter College at Georgia State University); Lawrence M. Lesser (The University of Texas at El Paso); Dennis Pearl (The Pennsylvania State University)


Information

Our July 2016 JSE paper gave promising evidence for the educational effectiveness of songs in teaching introductory statistics. Our NSF-funded Project SMILES developed a set of 22 songs integrated with a fill-in-the-blanks “MadLibs-style” approach to interactively engage students. Students supply examples or concepts to complete high-quality artistic songs covering content objectives aligned with the GAISE and GOALS documents. A synthetic voice then adds inserted words into the studio versions of the songs recorded by the UTEP Commercial Music Program. Finally, after playing the constructed and studio versions of the song, students will apply their knowledge of the topic through further explorations and assessments now being developed. We will share background data on the effectiveness of the educational use of songs from our JSE 2016 paper and discuss 2017 data from piloting interactive songs at a university and at a two-year college. USCOTS attendees will be able to try the web-based interface and hear the statistical songs they created.


Poster - John Weber, Lawrence Lesser, and Dennis Pearl.pdf