NSF Awards: 1626337
StatPREP fosters the widespread use of data-centered methods and pedagogies in introductory statistics courses. This in turn enhances the preparation of students to meet the demands of a data-driven workplace and to use the newly available resources in our data-centric world. StatPREP works directly with college-level instructors, both online and in community-based workshops, to develop the understanding and skills needed to work and teach with modern data.
Kathryn Kozak
Instructor
Thank you for visiting the StatPREP video. I am a statistics instructor at Cococino Community College. Our project is focused on fostering the widespread use of data-centered methods and pedagogies in introductory statistics courses. StatPREP works directly with college-level instructors, both online and in community-based workshops, to develop the understanding and skills needed to work and teach with modern data.
We are especially interested in discussion regarding teaching introductory statistics using real data, focusing on statistical concepts rather than computations, and how we can effectively use technology to help increase student understanding. However, please comment on any aspect of our project.
James Afful
Kristin Flaming
Tichina Ward-Pratt
Educator
I appreciate the video and the focus on data-centered methods and pedagogies. I wonder what motivated this project to focus on community college introductory statistics courses? Was there a specific need in this population?
Ambika Silva
Faculty
Hi Tichina,
Thank you for watching our video! At my community college, the proportion of non-STEM majors is very high, which means we have a lot of students taking general ed math courses such as Intro Statistics. For me, in California, we also have legislation that has placed all of our students into college transferrable math courses so there is definitely a need to support both our faculty and students!
Ambika Silva
Faculty
Welcome to the StatPREP conversation! I am a two-year college mathematics and statistics educator at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, CA.
Changing practice in our classrooms is tough! StatPREP gave me a supportive community of educators around me to help me rethink how we teach introductory statistics today.
I look forward to hearing from you this week. I'd like to know what questions you have about data-driven stats? How have you experienced meaningful professional development and what would you like to know about the StatPREP model?
Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein
This is very cool! I took my first stats class more than 20 years ago, and was lucky enough to have teachers who focused on concepts. (Their philosophy was "if you understand the concepts, you can derive most of the math in a pinch -- and we have graphing calculators" which has served me well...) I love seeing how much that approach continues on.
James Afful
Ambika Silva
Faculty
That's awesome Jena, I too took intro statistics about 20 years ago too but it was all formulas and tables at the time!!! My teacher was nice enough to let us use our graphing calculators, but it wasn't concept-driven the way it is now. It's so cool to hear that at that time others were doing that!
Kristin Flaming
This is a great program. Our Passion-Driven Statistics model has many similarities.
What software(s) do you find a lot of your partners at community colleges are using in the classroom? I noticed on your website it mentions R. Our partners tend to use SAS on Demand, R, and SPSS the most then we have others that use STATA, Python, StatCrunch, Excel, JMP, and JASP.
We are always looking for new archival datasets that are cleaned, have a large number of variables and cases, and a good code book. I found on your website a link to many datasets and places to search for data. Do you have one or two that you recommend we explore? We have liked and students have found interest in the below.
What strategies have you found the most successfully in recruiting participants to workshops that take what they learn and actually implement it in their classroom?
I saw on the website that you have Regional Hubs. Can you explain how you use these hubs to facilitate your model?
You mentioned in the video a few strategies you used in the virtual workshops that helped with engagement. Can you expand upon this by explaining what strategies you plan to continue to use virtually and for in person workshops? Or if one of your webinars demonstrates these I can watch whichever one that is linked on your website.
Ambika Silva
Faculty
Hi Kristin,
We have found that faculty are using a wide variety of statistical software from graphing calculators to programing programs and try to discourage using graphing calculators and suggest other technologies. We incorporate R into our workshops and have the Little apps http://www.statprep.org/LittleAppSite/ where folks have access to free applets that don't require any outside technology.
For strategies we are incorporating from our virtual experiences, we are testing them next week in person! We used facilitator google slides that we shared with participants so they could have all the links in one document, and are planning to incorporate that into the in person workshop. We also are planning some of the activities such as word clouds and polls that we did virtually to help with engagement.
Joan Ferrini-Mundy
University President
Great to hear about how you adapted to virtual approaches and found creative ways to engage the participants. Do you have any information yet about how the participants are using the workshop tools/datasets in their own instruction? Are they adapting and expanding to suit their local contexts? It would be great to hear more about the impact on the teaching of statistics and data science in the institutions involved in the project.
Ambika Silva
Faculty
Thanks for watching the video Joan! We do not have information that I know of about how they are using the instruction other than what we have heard from talking to past participants. I have heard that because our content does not change the curriculum they are already doing, that it is easy to incorporate into their courses.
Joi Spencer
Interim Dean and Professor of Mathematics Education
STAT Prep Team-
It is so refreshing to see new data sets being introduced to introductory statistics courses. I am curious about the different kinds of topics your data sets explore. Using data (and particularly data with greater relevance to students) to teach statistics may impact how much students engage in courses as well as their persistence in the courses. Like introductory mathematics courses, introductory stats courses are often gatekeepers. Are your instructors paying attention to changes in course persistence, course engagement and perhaps achievement. (Fewer Ds, Fs, and withdraws in intro stats) for example...
Kathryn Kozak
Instructor
Joi,
Thank you for the question. The StatPREP Little Apps, and the activities that compliment them, demonstrate choosing explanatory and response variables, center and spread of data, shapes of distributions, normal distribution, confidence intervals and hypothesis tests, and regression analysis. Each uses the same datasets and allows students to visually see the sampling variability by taking samples of different sizes.
We don't ask our faculty what their success rates are, so I can't answer that question. However, anecdotally, we hear that students have a better understanding of the material. Our workshops model active learning. In addition, the workshops help the teachers understand the concepts.
The grant is ending, but if another grant is proposed these would be interesting questions to try to answer.
Carmen Caiseda
Hi Kathryn! This is a powerful project. I am excited to see how statistics and math may be part of our culture through the impact of professors in their learning communities that you train. I wonder how can I participate in your workshops and also bring to Puerto Rico educators your work.
Kathryn Kozak
Instructor
Our last in person workshop is May 20-21st in Fort Myers, Florida. I am not sure if there is space, but if you can come I can ask if there is room. Let me know. Otherwise, we are presenting a mini course at MAA's MathFest. It is August 4-6 in Philadelphia, PA. MathFest information is at https://www.maa.org/meetings/mathfest and then you can find our mini course. We are also presenting at eCOTS May 23-26. eCOTS website is https://www.causeweb.org/cause/ecots/ecots22/. Lastly, we are presenting at MAA's Open Math, but the registration is closed for that workshop.
Let me know if you want me to see if you can attend next weeks workshop.
Carmen Caiseda
What is, in your opinion, the greatest challenge in teaching statistics in our Community Colleges in times like these? How can we handle those students that are not comfortable with coding, functions, and math in general?
Ambika Silva
Faculty
Hi Carmen, thanks for starting that conversation! I think that by focusing on concepts rather than formulas, we open up a lot more time to make room for technology. My students don't do coding, my challenge with coding is more on getting the professional development for instructors so that they feel comfortable teaching in that way.
Kathryn Kozak
Instructor
My students don't seem to have an issue with the coding, but I do tell them I will give them the exact code they need. I am more interested in my students understanding how to use data to make decisions. I am at a community college. I tell my students exactly how to do the code and that doesn't seem to be a barrier. I also tell my students that there is very little algebra in the course and make them feel comfortable with this. I feel that students had harder time doing the formulas by hand than they do with coding.