During Fall Semester, 2000, a set of activities were developed and tried with a small section of middle school education majors taking Introductory Statistics at the University of Akron. Most of the activities are designed to allow the students to think about certain issues and concepts prior to their formal introduction by the instructor. The activities lend themselves to group work and a learner-oriented classroom approach, rather than a traditional lecture-and-take-notes format.
One of the objectives of this course was to provide the future middle-school educators with a first-hand experience of the inquiry approach. Clearly, if they are going to implement these strategies in their own classrooms, they will benefit from having participated in a college class that actually uses such an approach. The activities are therefore geared toward the college level, and are not directly designed for K-12. However, it is hoped that some of these activities may be adapted for K-12 use.
Another objective was to experiment with an approach to teaching & learning that has not been used previously to any great extent by the faculty in our department. Perhaps students may be better able to grasp important concepts with the inquiry strategy. To pursue this objective, several Dept. of Statistics faculty will be trying out a few of the inquiry activities next semester in their own classes.
The inquiry activities that were developed during Fall, 2000, should be viewed as merely a first attempt. They were all geared to the course Introductory Statistics, where the required text was Intro. to the Practice of Statistics, 3rd ed., by Moore & McCabe. (Freeman, 1999) Some modification of the activities will be needed in order to make these mesh with other courses taught at different levels with other texts. A few of the activities were done in a lab room with computers equipped with Minitab software. Other statistical software could also be incorporated. For example, those with web access could use Webstat and do the analyses on-line.
We invite your comments and suggestions! Please let us know if you tried any of the activities and how they worked out with your students. Also, what modifications did you make, if any?
Dr.
Rich Einsporn, Dept. of Statistics
e-mail:rle@uakron.edu
330-972-8007
Dr. Lynne Pachnowski, College
of Education
e-mail: lmp@uakron.edu
330-972-7115
Mr. Henry Muren,
middle school consultant, Barberton School District
e-mail: hmuren@barberton.summit.k12.oh.us
Webstat -- Do basic statistical analysis online!
Regression by Eye -- A cool interactive regression and correlation applet!
This page was last modified on Monday, December 11, 2000
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