Identifying and Addressing Difficult Concepts for Students in an Introductory Statistics Course

Marjorie E. Bond, Monmouth College

June 14, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm

Abstract

We know that students have difficulty with certain topics in statistics, and it can be difficult to determine the best approach to take to help students work through these topics. In this workshop, we take a selection of difficult concepts, zoom in on exactly what the problems are from the student’s point of view, and examine where, when, and how to address them in our course. Along the way, we will examine these difficult statistical concepts in detail, and look for common threads that may even lead us back to issues from Chapter 1. The workshop will also discuss the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) objectives for a statistically educated citizen. The workshop is particularly geared toward instructors at two-year colleges. Instructors new to teaching statistics as well those who have been teaching for a while will find the workshop beneficial.

Presenter 

This workshop will be presented by Dr. Marjorie Bond, a Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Monmouth College, a small liberal arts college in western Illinois. Dr. Bond has more than twenty years of classroom experience teaching introductory statistics to students with various mathematics backgrounds at multiple institutions.