Comparing Student Success and Understanding in Introductory Statistics Under Consensus and Simulation-Based Curricula

Abstract

This study examines the transferability of results from previous studies of simulation-based curriculum in introductory statistics using data from 3,500 students enrolled in an introductory statistics course at Montana State University from fall 2013 through spring 2016. During this time, four different curricula, a traditional curriculum and three simulation-based curricula, were used. Student success rates and understanding of six key statistical concepts are compared among these curricula using mixed logistic regression. Results indicate that after controlling for salient covariates, differences in student success rates are minimal while student understanding under the simulation-based curricula are similar to or better than student understanding under the traditional curriculum suggesting simulation-based curricula may help increase student understanding of several key statistical concepts. First published May 2018 at Statistics Education Research Journal Archives

Student Performance in Curricula Centered on Simulation-Based Inference

“…For example, Maurer and Lock (2015) found advantages to using bootstrapping when introducing confidence intervals. Hildreth et al (2018) saw improvements from using simulation-based inference curriculum on six key statistical concepts. Beckman et al (2017) saw improved cognitive transfer outcomes when comparing a simulation-based curriculum to a traditional approach.…”

“…The literature to date has focused primarily on smaller samples from limited numbers of institutions, often comparing only two curricula. This has led some to call for additional studies to enhance generalizability, including measures of student demographics, measures of student ability, and measures of student attitudes (e.g., Hildreth et al, 2018). Furthermore, the unique pedagogical aspects, ordering, and focus of the ISI curriculum on the overarching statistical process (see Tintle et al, 2011Tintle et al, , 2014 for additional details), combined with promising preliminary data (e.g., Tintle et al, 2011Tintle et al, , 2012 lead to questions about whether unique aspects of the ISI curriculum facilitate different learning outcomes compared to other SBI curricula.…”

Kill The Math and Let the Introductory Course Be Born

“…Ismay and Kim ( 2019) is an excellent textbook, suitable for use in an introductory class. Although there is evidence (Hildreth et al (2018)) that a simulation-based curriculum improves student understanding, an even bigger advantage, relative to the traditional approach, is the excuse it offers for programming practice. The more code that students write, the better they will become at coding.…”

Bringing Visual Inference to the Classroom

“…Recent years have seen a great deal of innovation in how we teach statistics as we strive to overcome what Cobb (2007) termed "the tyranny of the computable." Most notably, simulation-based pedagogies for the first course have been proposed and validated (Cobb 2007, Tintle et al 2011, 2012, Maurer & Lock 2014, Tintle et al 2014, Hildreth et al 2018).…”