Developing Interactive Educational Songs for Introductory Statistics

Abstract

This article describes the process used to develop and assess an NSF-funded instructional innovation: an online collection (https://www.CAUSEweb.org/smiles/) of 28 interactive songs of high esthetic quality designed to span literature-based learning objectives of introductory statistics that develop statistical literacy and reasoning. The interactive songs are also designed to reduce statistics anxiety and require little time or instructor expertise. The songs are interactive in that the interface solicits (and provides hints and feedback on) student contributions (concepts or examples) and then plays back the song with student inputs integrated and highlighted. After providing a brief background, this article describes requirements, challenges, and opportunities in educational songwriting for the mathematical sciences, then describes the intervention and how its special nature affected the development process. Pilot studies at a research university and at a majority Black two-year college showed that students found the innovation to be a good tool to help their learning, reduce their anxiety about statistics, have an easy to follow interface, and use high quality songs. Analysis of log files from the use of the software shows some evidence of better performance on assessments after use and informs improvements of the automated feedback. Supplemental materials for this article are available online.

Is memorization the name of the game? Undergraduates’ perceptions of the usefulness of physiology songs

“…Regarding song length, our evidence that students prefer songs to be as short as possible, perhaps Ͻ30 s, corroborates and extends previous data on this point (8), but seems to be in conflict with the lengths of most educational STEM songs used in high school and college. In a national curated database of 178 songs about statistics (19,21,28), the median song length was found to be 1 min 55 s, i.e., over twice as long as the longest song in the present study, whereas in a database of 191 physics songs (32), the median song length was 2 min 7 s (Fig. 3).…”

Statistical edutainment that lines up and fits

“…To cover many overall basic aspects of regression, including assessing the scatterplot for linearity, predicting Y from x , and interpreting slope and r 2 , there is a song “Regression Rumba” [19] written in that globally popular musical form.…”

Interview With Larry Lesser

“…Reflecting on that experiment led to our current NSF grant (Project SMILES) to write and assess songs that are "interactive"-kind of like the Mad Libs TM word game-where students give inputs in advance that end up highlighted in the completed song on the playback page. We detailed our process in the last JSE (Lesser et al 2019), and a 3-min overview video is on our project website: https://www.CAUSEweb.org/ smiles/. Pilot studies at a research university and at a majority Black two-year college showed students found the innovation to help their learning and lower their anxiety.…”