Midwest Conference on Teaching Statistics

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Introductory Statistics Course Websites BEYOND
syllabus.html

• Christopher J. Malone
• www.ksu.edu/stats/tch/malone/stat351
• Christopher R. Bilder
• www.ksu.edu/stats/tch/bilder/s351

Department of Statistics Kansas State University
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Introduction
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(No Transcript)
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• Statistical literature - very little
• Non-statistical literature - some

• Searched Journal of Statistics Education
• WWW - 14 matched (3.2)
• creating a website - 0 matched (0)

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Literature Review
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• Student-instructor interaction
• inside the classroom
• outside the classroom (our purpose)

• Student - student interaction
• forum for discussion as one group

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A course website permits

• Students to obtain quick and possibly
  simultaneous feedback from instructors
• Students and instructors to interact anytime or
  anyplace
• Shy or intimated students to contact instructor

• Instructors to easily and expediently transmit
  information in an organized and efficient manner
• Instructors to nourish discussions by posing
  questions between class periods
• Reduce secretarial duties

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Literature Review
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Message Board

• Refrigerator / white board analogy

• All messages are sent directly to a webpage
• Advantage over e-mail Alleviates answering
  same question repeatedly
• Advantage over listserv

The user ultimately chooses which of the posted
messages to open and readmessage boards are
inherently cleaner than listservs the user takes
what is desired, rather than discard what is not
desired (Brooks, 1997)
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Chat Room

• Analogy

• Synchronous interaction
• Office Hours
• Evenings, Weekends
• Away from home

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Message Board / Chat Room
Learning statistics means learning to
communicate using the statistical language...
(Garfield, 1995)

• New way for students to communicate using the
  statistical language
• Students learn through posing questions

Comment One must be concerned about
student-student interaction vs. a timely response
to a question Which is more important??
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• Other webpages
• Day-by-day schedule priming questions (Beth
  Chance, 1998), summary of material covered in
  class, appropriate links to other peoples
  websites

• Computer pages software instructions, templates,
  large data files, etc
• Homework Pages problems with solutions
• Exam Pages study guides, practice exams, online
  quizzes (not graded)
• Links page
• Syllabus page

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Literature Review
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• Tree diagrams
• Hyperlinked webpages
• Useful for file management
• Site Map

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• Good organization entails
• Navigation Bar to main webpages (including Home)
• Titles for webpages

• Consistent placement of the above and webpage
  content
• Limit the amount of scrolling

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Literature Review
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NO NEED TO LEARN HTML!

• Website creation and management software
• Adobes Pagemill
• Macromedias Dreamweaver
• Microsofts FrontPage

• What you see is what you get! (WYSIWYG)

• Features
• Themes
• Automatic navigation bars
• Search devices
• Advanced applications

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NO NEED TO LEARN HTML!

• Website management tools
• Tree based organizational views
• Checks for broken hyperlinks
• Preview webpages in Netscape or Internet Explorer

• Publishing websites to the web
• Webmaster person in charge of websites for an
  organization
• Webserver computer where a website is stored
• Publish with a point-and-click!

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NO NEED TO LEARN HTML!

• More advanced webpages may require special
  software on the webserver
• Solution Freeware
• FreeCode
• Java Boutique
• WebScripts
• New Breed Softwares Free Chat

• Collect vital information about your users
• Solution Free Trackers
• eXTReMe Tracking
• TheCounter.com
• SuperStats.com

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Literature Review
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• Two Examples
• Bilders STAT 351 website
• Malones STAT 351 website
• (will not be discussed)

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Bilders STAT 351 website

• Created almost entirely with FrontPage98
• Most webpages contain
• Navigation bar on left
• Title banner at top

• Homepage contains a scroller to display important
  announcements
• VertTextScroller
• very easy to setup
• easy to customize

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Bilders STAT 351 website
Homepage screen capture here
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Bilders STAT 351 website

• Message board
• Program from WebScripts WebBBS
• Organized
• E-mail notification of new messages

• Chat Room
• Program from New Breed Softwares Free Chat
• easy to setup
• can be customized
• Virtual office hour

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Bilders STAT 351 website
Chat Room screen capture
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Bilders STAT 351 website

• Excel Word webpage
• Students may download Excel97 files
• In-class examples
• Interactive spreadsheets to teach students
  important concepts
• Data sets for assignments
• Students may download Word97 files
• Help inserting symbols and equations

• Schedule webpage
• Class notes, exam dates, etc
• Other webpages...
• Homework, Links, Syllabus, Tests Assignments,
  etc

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Assessment
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• Formal Assessment would be a WHOLE new
  presentation
• Usage for Bilders STAT 351 class (Spring 1999)
• Average weekly student enrollment 33 students
• Homepage
• Hits per day Average 9.3, SD8.37

Assessment

• Message board
• Instructor posts 59
• Student posts 49 (unique 17)
• Chat room
• Student visits 38 (unique 16)
• Message board chat room
• Unique student visitors 27

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Histogram here
Average 9.3 SD 8.37
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Time Series here
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Website Motivational Analysis Checklist (WEBMAC)
instrument (Small and Arnone 1999)

• FREE from the Motivational Mining Company
• WebMAC Senior 3.1, 40 items pertaining to a
  website

Assessment

• Survey respondents are asked to mark whether they
  
• Strongly disagree Score3
• Somewhat disagree Score2
• Somewhat agree Score1
• Strongly agree Score0

• Responses for each item are summarized into four
  website motivational factors
• Engaging
• Meaningful
• Organized
• Satisfying
• Total possible score for each factor is 30.

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Boxplots here
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WEBMAC Results

• All factors have scores in the highly
  motivating scoring range.
• Website delivers meaningful content to the
  student
• Well organized for the student to navigate
  through.
• Some scores in the needs some improvement range
  for the Engaging and Satisfying factors.
• Item-by-item investigation shows
• Help function could be added
• More visually stimulating items may be needed

Assessment

• Websites can be continually improved upon
• Never are perfect
• Authors plan to evaluate and re-evaluate their
  websites to increase the educational benefits to
  the student

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Conclusion
Assessment
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Bibliography

• Brooks, David (1997). Web-Teaching A Guide to
  Designing Interactive Teaching for the World Wide
  Web. Plenum Press, New York.
• Chance, Beth (1998) . Incorporating a Listserv
  into Introductory Statistics Courses. Talk at
  Joint Statistical Meetings, Dallas, TX.
• Garfield, Joan (1995). How Students Learn
  Statistics. International Statistical Review,
  Volume 63 pp25-34.
• Small, R.V. and Arnone, M.P. (1999). Mining the
  Motivational Potential of the World Wide Web How
  Secondary Educators Are Making It Work For Them.
  Linworth Publishing.

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URL Bibliography

• Authors
• Christopher J. Malone www.ksu.edu/stats/tch/malo
  ne/stat351
• Christopher R. Bilder www.ksu.edu/stats/tch/bild
  er/s351
• Adobes Pagemill
• www.adobe.com/prodindex/pagemill
• eXTReMe Tracking
• www.extreme-dm.com
• FreeCode
• www.freecode.com
• Java Boutique
• www.javaboutique.internet.com
• Journal of Statistics Education
• www.stat.ncsu.edu/info/jse

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URL Bibliography (continued)

• Macromedias Dreamweaver
• www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver
• Microsofts Frontpage
• www.microsoft.com/frontpage
• Motivational Mining Company
• www.motivationmining.com
• New Breed Softwares Free Chat
• www.sonic.net/nbs/unix/www/freechat
• Supertats.com
• v2.superstats.com
• TheCounter.com
• www.thecounter.com
• VertTextScroller
• www.javaboutique.internet.com/VertTextScroller
• Webscripts
• www.awsd.com/scripts