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Company History Key People News Customer Profiles Contact Us Employment |
Category: Education Team Teachers Throw Away the Book, Stick with Concepts and Skills
Clarkson and Williams were the ideal team to try out the new courseware. Sandi's doctorate is in mathematics education, and she has a special interest in working with students who have difficulty in math. Bill, who holds a Ph.D. in statistics and economics, came to higher education after a long career as a statistician working on social science methodology for Bell labs--and serving after-hours as a statistics expert for National Hockey League player arbitrations. The two had already devised tactics to meet the needs of the 200 students who thronged into the classroom each semester, and ActivStats proved compatible with these. The course is carried out via a lecture—now illustrated by big screen projections of ActivStats—and lab sessions for smaller groups. At the end of each lecture, the teachers set aside time for group work. A statistics problem is presented, and the students gather in groups of 3 or 4 to ponder the analysis and hand in a solution. "We don't tell them which statistics procedure to use," and this is where the multiple pathways to understanding in ActivStats are a big help. "It takes such a deliberate route." After using ActivStats in conjunction with a textbook for one semester, Sandi and Bill dropped the book. "It was just a distraction," says Bill, and Sandi found that the students tended to lean on the formal structure of the text without relying on the concepts delivered in it. "Taking the book away causes a little anxiety at the beginning of the semester, but the students come out with great confidence." She has also noticed that one advantage of relying solely on the software is that the students gain much of their understanding through visual images. This is the team's sixth semester teaching with ActivStats. One thing about the team's class hasn't changed. The students work hard, especially those who have limited experience with a computer. Not infrequently they complain about the load. "It is a lot of work," Sandi acknowledges, but she says that those who stick with it are rewarded. "They come away from the course not afraid of a computer or of data. It's a perfect course for beginners." |
Name: Dr. Sandra Pryor Clarkson and Bill Williams Affiliation: Hunter College
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Sandra Pryor Clarkson and Dr. Bill Williams had been team-teaching a big class in introductory statistics at Hunter College for almost a decade, and they were looking for software to supplement the various textbooks they had tried. When they happened in on a session at the 1997 International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics where Data Description's Paul Velleman was introducing ActivStats®, that encounter transformed their teaching and their students' classroom experiences.