PROJECTS
This NSF-funded project developed lesson plans and activities based on innovative materials that have been produced in the past few years for introductory statistics courses. These lesson plans and student activity guides were developed to help transform an introductory statistics course into one that is aligned with the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) for teaching introductory statistics courses. The lessons, which build on implications from educational research, involve students in small and large group discussion, computer explorations, and hands-on activities.
CATALST is a collaboration of statistics education professionals who are striving to change the way statistics is taught to students, particularly at the introductory college level. Our activities include: Conducting research projects on developing and assessing statistical literacy, reasoning and thinking; Developing and sharing research-based materials to promote these learning outcomes; Exploring innovative approaches to online methods of teaching statistics; Organizing opportunities to expand our knowledge of teaching and learning statistics through study groups and colloquia; Active participation in the national and international statistics education communities; and Promoting the development of excellent teachers of statistics.
In science, catalysis is the acceleration (increase in rate) of a chemical reaction by means of a substance called a catalyst. In more general terms anything that accelerates a process may be called a ὔcatalystὕ. We associate catalysts with leading to some profound or major change. This NSF funded project uses the acronym CATALST to represent the goal of accelerating change in the teaching and learning of statistics. The changes we are working towards are in both content and pedagogy. Our focus is the first, introductory, non-calculus based statistics course. This project is designed to develop, implement, evaluate, and disseminate a radically different but much needed introductory statistics course. This project builds on several previously funded projects, connecting them in a way that will enable us to design and teach a unique course that we may also study carefully determine its feasibility and its impact on important students and teacher outcomes.
This project is one component of a collaborative effort to develop and pilot the Statistics Teaching Practice Survey, which is based on the Statistics Teaching Inventory - designed as part of the NSF-funded ARTIST project (DUE-0206571). This project is evaluating and refining the instrument and working with researchers from other STEM disciplines to align this project with similar efforts in other fields. A sister project (Statistics Teaching Practice Survey: Planning and online logistics) based at the Ohio State University is creating the mechanism for administering the survey online, creating a data base and report structure, and administering the instrument. Working jointly, the instrument is to be used to gather and examine pilot data over multiple time points, including settings where change is anticipated (e.g. in gauging instructional changes for participants in a best practices workshop). Together these two projects are preparing the way for follow on work to gather longitudinal data on the teaching of STEM undergraduate courses in order to track changes over time and measure the alignment of teaching with data-based recommendations for improvement in teaching methods and materials.