By Daisy Philtron and Patricia Buchanan, The Pennsylvania State University
Information
This poster summarizes our findings after moving a large-enrollment introductory statistics course at Penn State from a standard curriculum to a simulation-based inference (SBI) curriculum. Beginning in Spring 2017, we evaluated the potential impact of this curricular shift on student outcomes using pre- and post-scores on the GOALS instrument for students enrolled in standard and SBI classes for two instructors, and for multiple year SBI offerings from a third. We found that pre-test scores were comparable for all sections and semesters included in the study, but that post-test scores were significantly higher for the SBI sections. This result held for different sections within the same semester during a pilot offering of SBI, and for the same instructors across consecutive semesters when one semester used a traditional curriculum and the following used SBI.