Blended Pedagogy in Social Statistics Courses: Prelecture Strategies for Encouraging Learning among First-Generation College Students

Abstract

In this article, I ask to what extent first-generation college students experience statistics anxiety and what are effective pedagogical strategies for building student confidence and encouraging learning. To answer these questions, I draw on the wide-ranging and developing literature on blended teaching methods—most commonly defined as the integration of web-based activities and traditional face-to-face instruction—to design and implement an experiment measuring the effectiveness of providing varying supports in social statistics courses. Evidence from the experiment and learning reflections demonstrates that regardless of whether students experience statistics anxiety, at a minimum, reading comprehension supports have a statistically significant positive effect on first-generation college students’ learning (N = 46), and blended learning supports have a statistically significant positive effect for both first-generation and continuing-generation college students (N = 59). The positive and statistically significant effect of providing students with blended learning prelecture supports can counteract the negative and statistically significant effect of being a first-generation college student. These findings suggest that simple and effective pedagogical strategies can help better prepare students for exposure to new material, thereby encouraging greater overall learning in social statistics courses.