And Beyond...

There are, of course, many other ways to describe variables and relationships among variables, and most have accompanying inference methods. By this point in the course, students should be comfortable with the reasoning of inference and with the working of their statistics software. We hope that they realize that they can learn new methods by reading about them and by learning how they work in a statistics program.

Pedagogical Features and Philosophy

Multimedia provides the opportunity to make learning statistics a more individual, more rewarding, and more engaging experience. ActivStats implements several specific pedagogical principles:

• Self-paced instruction. The Lesson Book that is the "home base" for ActivStats provides organization, introduction, and summaries. However, it is not the principal learning environment. Because Statistics is a structured discipline, students need to know where they are in the course; what they have learned, what they will learn, and where what they are learning now fits into that sequence. The Lesson Book provides that information. However, learning itself takes place primarily in the activities. Activities are initiated by students at their own command. Nothing happens in AS unless the student requests it. Activities are brief, focused, and repeatable. As a result, each student moves at his own pace, working with activities when ready and repeating them as needed.
• Single-concept units. ActivStats deals with one concept at a time. It motivates learning with real-world examples (often illustrated with videos), explains with animated expositions, illustrates with interactive visualization tools, and reinforces with application to real-world data. The student's understanding of each concept is solidified before she moves on to the next one.
• Single-goal activities. Each activity deals with a single concept or a few tightly related concepts in a single, consistent way. Students are not overwhelmed with information and can digest the material in the activity (or repeat it) before proceeding to the next. This approach helps students to fit each new idea into their growing understanding of statistics.
• Authentic instruction. Students learn to do what statisticians and data analysts actually do. They apply their newly learned skills to real data and interpret the results in meaningful ways. Students leave the course with practical computer-based skills and, if they own the ActivStats DVD, with a functional statistics package.
• Discovery learning. Students discover for themselves many of the key ideas of statistics. Discovered concepts are easier to retain and tend to fit together into a coherent whole more completely. In the challenging areas of probability and inference, ActivStats treats the computer as a laboratory for random phenomena, providing truly random experimental results.
• Object verity. Teaching Applets in ActivStats behave like real-world objects. Students click and drag points in plots, regression lines, and correlation values—and see the effect of their actions while they are acting. (It is much more effective to watch, for example, a correlation coefficient change while you are dragging a point to a new location, then to see it update only after you drag the point.) Similarly, simulated values are generated honestly (not with pseudo-random values) under student control and in full view; the results "fall" into appropriate tables and plots so students can follow the action. Realistic animations are more compelling and more effective for teaching.
• Just-in-time answers. The best time to teach a concept or definition is when the student asks about it. But students must be able to find answers quickly and easily. ActivStats has a complete, hypertext-linked Glossary and hypertext Index. The Glossary is context-sensitive, often citing the example under discussion at that point in the lesson. The Glossary and Index are linked together, so it is easy to find not just a definition, but also the point in the course that first discussed the concept.
• Real-world links. Statistics is about understanding the world through data. ActivStats videos take the student into the world to show applications of statistics. ActivStats also provides web links to current worldwide web sites for background information, up-to-the minute data, and alternative teaching approaches.
• Computer-based practice. Students apply their newly acquired skills and understanding to real data. This reinforces learning because students use newly learned concepts and methods while they are fresh.