Webinars

Computing is an increasingly important element of statistical practice and research. It is an essential tool in our daily work, it shapes the way we think about statistics, and broadens our concept of statistical science. Although many agree that there should be more computing in the statistics curriculum and that statistics students need to be more computationally capable and literate, it can be difficult to determine how the curriculum should change because computing has many dimensions. In this webinar we explore alternatives to teaching statistics that include innovations in data technologies, modern statistical methods, and a variety of computing skills that will enable our students to become active and engaged participants in scientific discovery.Watch Webinar Recording (FLASH)

The procedural steps involved in completing a statistical investigation are often discussed in an introductory statistics course. For example, students usually gain knowledge about developing an appropriate research question, performing appropriate descriptive and graphical summaries, completing the necessary inferential procedures, and communicating the results of such an analysis. The traditional sequencing of topics in an introductory course places statistical inference near the end. As a result, students have limited opportunities to perform a complete statistical investigation. We propose a new sequencing of topics that may enhance students' ability to perform a complete statistical investigation from beginning to end.Watch Webinar Recording (FLASH)

This presentation will describe the "Buffet" method for teaching multi-section courses. In this method, students are offered a choice of content delivery strategies designed to match different individual learning styles. The choice is exercised through an on-line "contract" entered into by students at the beginning of the term. The webinar will describe our experiences with the buffet strategy at Ohio State and discuss how key elements of the strategy can also be adapted to smaller classes to improve student learning.Watch Webinar Recording (FLASH)

As we consider how we might improve our introductory statistics course we are constrained by a variety of environmental/logistical and pedagogical issues that must be addressed if we want our students to complete the course saying it was useful, it was relevant and practical, and that it increased their communicational, computational, technological and analytical skills. If not properly considered, such issues may result in the course being considered unsatisfying, incomprehensible, and/or unnecessarily obtuse.This Webinar will focus on key course content concerns that must be addressed and will engage participants in discussing resolutions. Participants will also have the opportunity to describe and discuss other content barriers to effective statistical pedagogy. Watch Webinar Recording (FLASH)

This webinar will include an introduction to the idea of assessment for learning - assessments that support learning, enhance learning, and provide additional learning opportunities that support instruction. Several fundamental measurement tools will be described to support the development of effective assessments that work.Watch Webinar Recording (FLASH)

Writing can be a wonderful tool to help illuminate what students are learning in our statistics courses. Examples and strategies to include writing in your teaching toolkit -- and to increase the writing skills of students -- include team assignments, weekly case reports, in-class questions, and others. The webinar will share effective approaches and assignments gleaned from twenty years of using writing in introductory and upper-level statistics courses.Watch Webinar Recording (FLASH)

The Internet is a great source of learning resources to help statistics teachers and students. Examples include interactive applets, videos, tutorials, lesson plans, case studies, and engaging learning activities. This webinar will demonstrate assessing statistics education learning materials based on the peer-review criteria used by digital libraries such as MERLOT and CAUSEweb.Watch Webinar Recording (FLASH)

Carnegie Mellon University was funded to develop a "stand-alone" web-based introductory statistics course, and for the last several semesters we've been studying different ways in which the course can be used to support instruction. In this presentation I'll discuss some of the challenges in developing such a learning environment and ways in which the course tries to address them, as well as describe the design and results of our studies.Watch Webinar Recording (FLASH)

Drawing from (and expanding upon) his article in the March 2007 Journal of Statistics Education, Larry Lesser will discuss and invite discussion about examples, resources and pedagogy associated with this meaningful way of engaging students in the statistics classroom. Also a November 2008 webinar on this topic tailored to K-12 teachers is available at the ASA webinar site.Watch Webinar Recording (FLASH)

We've probably all observed that some of our students become positively irritated with the uncertainty that remains after solving a problem of statistical inference. This webinar reports on a continuing empirical investigation of the relationship between Ambiguity Tolerance (AT) and students' facility in developing the skills of inferential reasoning. This research uses some validated measures of AT and of statistical thinking to focus on ambiguity tolerance as an explanatory or moderating factor in learning to apply the techniques of inference.Watch Webinar Recording (FLASH)