Do Hands-on Activities Increase Student Understanding?: A Case Study

Pfaff, Thomas J.; Weinberg, Aaron

doi:10.1080/10691898.2009.11889536

Cited by 36 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Some instructors/researchers have presented anecdotal evidence suggesting that active learning is effective (e.g., Knypstra, 2009;Bates Prins, 2009) and others have presented evidence that students' exam scores are higher when taught with an active learning approach than when taught with more traditional approaches (e.g., Christopher and Marek, 2009;Steinhorst and Keeler, 1995;Ryan, 2006;Yoder and Hochevar, 2005). Although numerous studies have found active learning to be effective, others have found it to have no effect (e.g., Pfaff and Weinberg, 2009) or even to hinder student performance (e.g., Weltman and Whiteside, 2010).…”

Section: Evaluating Active Learning Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating an Active Learning Approach to Teaching Introductory Statistics: A Classroom Workbook Approach

Carlson

Winquist

2011

Journal of Statistics Education

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The study evaluates a semester-long workbook curriculum approach to teaching a college level introductory statistics course. The workbook curriculum required students to read content before and during class and then work in groups to complete problems and answer conceptual questions pertaining to the material they read. Instructors spent class time answering students' questions. The 59 students who experienced the workbook curriculum completed the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS) on the first and last day of the course. These students' post course ratings on the subscales of cognitive competence, affect and difficulty were all significantly higher than their pre course ratings. Additionally, the 59 students' post course ratings for these 3 subscales were also significantly higher than those provided by a comparison group of statistics students (sample size 235). The results indicated that the students experiencing the workbook curriculum (1) had more confidence in their ability to perform and understand statistics, (2) liked statistics more, and (3) thought statistics was more difficult than the comparison group. Additionally, these students' attitude scores were positively correlated with both GPA and performance on a comprehensive final exam. We discuss the various methodological problems faced by classroom researchers and suggest that, in some cases, assessing students' attitudes can be an effective solution to these methodological problems. We conclude that the workbook approach holds promise for teaching introductory statistics courses.

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Section: Evaluating Active Learning Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating an Active Learning Approach to Teaching Introductory Statistics: A Classroom Workbook Approach

Carlson

Winquist

2011

Journal of Statistics Education

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“…In addition to the advantage of generating a rich dataset, involving the students in the data collection process should positively affect the students' interest in statistics (Snee 1993, Pfaff andWeinberg 2009). However, we had no scientific tool to test this effect on the participants.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The extent to which this can help to develop statistical reasoning skills and improve grades is still under discussion; however, it is agreed that such teaching techniques can be useful to improve student attendance and engagement at lectures (Snee 1993, Pfaff andWeinberg 2009). Involving students in data collection should naturally pique their interest in the topic of the data from early on in the process (Cummiskey, Kuiper and Sturvdant 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engaging Students in a Large Lecture: An Experiment Using Sudoku Puzzles

Brophy

Hahn²

2014

Journal of Statistics Education

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In this paper, we describe an in-class experiment that is easy to implement with large groups of students. The experiment takes approximately 15-20 minutes to run and involves each student completing one of four types of Sudoku puzzles and recording the time it takes to completion. The resulting data set can be used as a teaching tool at an introductory level right through to an advanced level of statistics. Basic methods for describing and displaying data as well as the intricacies that arise with real data may be discussed in an introductory course. The range of more sophisticated analyses that can be taught with the data set include chi-squared tests for independence, ANOVA, t-and F-tests, logistic regression and survival analysis. We describe and provide the tools to implement the experiment and illustrate several potential teaching topics using a collected data set.

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“…Pfaff and Weinberg (2009) used hands-on data generating activities to enhance students' understanding of statistical concepts. Meanwhile, Weltman and Whiteside (2010) found that active learning was more beneficial for the lower ability than the higher ability students for a group of introductory business statistics students specifically.…”

Section: Teaching and Learning Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Díez-Palomar

2015

REDIMAT

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Do Hands-on Activities Increase Student Understanding?: A Case Study

Cited by 36 publications

References 20 publications

Evaluating an Active Learning Approach to Teaching Introductory Statistics: A Classroom Workbook Approach

Evaluating an Active Learning Approach to Teaching Introductory Statistics: A Classroom Workbook Approach

Engaging Students in a Large Lecture: An Experiment Using Sudoku Puzzles

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