Redesign of the Statistics Course to Improve Graduates’ Skills

Abstract

In general, college students have concerns about mastering the Statistics course. Several scientific articles suggest that methodologies in which the student is an active part of the educational process lead to their greater involvement in teaching activities and better results in their overall assessment. A modified form of the Mathematics course inspires this study. The Mathematics course precedes the Statistics course. This study presents students’ results from both affected courses for the last 12 years. The authors obtained the data from the Modular Academic Information System (MAIS). The study describes the Statistics course, which is a combination of the traditional form of teaching and learning with elements of active learning. The product is a redesign of this course. The proposed changes are based on the requirements of some stakeholders. The results are from a survey of course graduates, from the experience of online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the introduction of active-learning elements. The authors of the article point out the risks and opportunities they found in teaching the Statistics course.

The Virtual Teaching in Statistics Course in Higher Education: A Bibliometric Analysis and Systematic Literature Research

“…At the same time, Benková et al [28] redesign a statistics course to improve the skills of graduates using the active learning methodology, the course was redesigned taking into account the opinions of graduates through the use of a survey, then the results of the evaluations of students enrolled in virtual modality that use the previous methodology and students that use the new methodology, it was identified that with the application of the active learning methodology the students significantly improved their learning, developed soft skills and a better understanding of statistical methods.…”

“…Twenty-six articles examined the impact of materials-based teaching, with the studies exploring various materials employed for teaching statistics to assess their effect on the advancement of statistical literacy. These materials encompassed the development of applications using statistical software [53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60], virtual simulators [25,29,30,36,61,62], real-time data analysis [19,20,25,28,33], interactive applications [63][64][65], and internet pages [31,32,34].…”

The Needs of Active Learning and High-Impact Educational Practices in Online Programs

“…The notion of active learning in higher education can be traced back to the 1980s (Pan & Fan, 2020). Active learning is a teaching approach that involves students to actively participate in the learning process (Benková et al, 2022;Prince, 2004). Active learning can be geared toward case-based, collaborative, cooperative, problem-based, and team-based learning (Collins & McLain, 2021;Prince, 2004).…”

“…Active learning advance students to inquire, experiment, collaborate, and experience the joy of learning (Budihal et al, 2020). To engage in active learning, students must engage in higher-order thinking tasks, including analysis, evaluation, and synthesis, to solve problems (Benková et al, 2022). Thus, active learning can support and develop critical skills, such as communication, cooperation, creativity, critical thinking, and knowledge-gathering (Benková et al, 2022).…”

“…To engage in active learning, students must engage in higher-order thinking tasks, including analysis, evaluation, and synthesis, to solve problems (Benková et al, 2022). Thus, active learning can support and develop critical skills, such as communication, cooperation, creativity, critical thinking, and knowledge-gathering (Benková et al, 2022). Prince (2004) argued that if the courses emphasize formulating active learning, these meaningful learning activities will help students accomplish learning outcomes effectively.…”