MATH:EAGER:Collaborative Research: SMILES (Student-Made Interactive Learning with Educational Songs) for Introductory Statistics

在我们这个越来越以数据为中心的世界里，统计推理--特别是在不确定性的背景下对数据进行推理--已经成为我们国家需要学生培养的技能的核心，特别是对于他们未来的劳动力职业。 一个本科生的第一次正式经验与统计推理经常发生在课堂上占主导地位的讲座，而不是积极的学习经验。此外，课堂教员往往在统计方面相对缺乏训练。 这是尤其如此，在两年制大学的兼职教师可以发现很难参加专业发展的机会，往往认为改革为基础的教学作为“额外的工作”时，他们已经有一个不合理的工作量，认为新的资源难以融入他们目前的教学模式，并认识到经常严重的“统计焦虑”在他们的学生。 SMILES（学生制作的互动学习与教育歌曲）介绍统计-一个合作项目，由宾夕法尼亚州立大学-大学公园，得克萨斯大学埃尔帕索分校和格鲁吉亚周边学院-将开发和现场测试一种创新的在线学习介绍统计，学生通过填写与学习目标相关的关键词来创作一首歌曲。这些互动歌曲将挑战学生建立概念联系，构建例子或背景，从而培养统计素养和推理能力。 通过减少统计焦虑（学生成功的一个关键障碍）和伴随的学生学习的提高，潜在的影响是惊人的。该项目的根本目标是开发资源，需要很少的教师时间或专业知识，但有很大的影响，发展统计素养和推理，并减少统计焦虑。与此相关，互动歌曲将提供一种新颖的学习资源，在统计和其他STEM学科的识字和推理技能教学方面具有巨大潜力。基于网络，机器运行，自动评分的特点，这个资源将提供方便的访问，学生随时随地，并将解决教师犹豫关于在课堂上使用。对于教师来说，无论教学法如何，互动歌曲都很容易采用（例如，与在线课程或讲座/实验室课程一样容易纳入翻转课程），并将为两年制大学兼职教师等群体提供一个通往统计教育改革运动的简单桥梁，否则他们可能会保持脱节。最重要的是，这些专业品质的互动歌曲将被设计为吸引学生，减轻焦虑，促进主动学习，从而提高统计推理能力。为了提高它们的价值，SMILES项目开发的互动歌曲将涉及一个独特的艺术家/科学家合作，创造原创的高质量音乐资源。为了评估互动歌曲在增强学生学习和减少学生焦虑方面的有效性和价值，项目团队将进行一项随机对照现场测试，涉及二十（20）名大学水平的入门统计教师，其中十五（15）人将来自两年制大学。响应变量将包括学生对多项选择评估项目的回答以及通过统计焦虑测量前（SAM）和SAM测量后测量的焦虑水平。由于两年制学院的学生主要由非裔美国人和西班牙裔学生组成，该项目的研究结果将扩大对最佳做法的了解，以满足国家扩大科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）学科领域参与的需求。

In our increasingly data-centric world, statistical reasoning--in particular, reasoning about data in the context of uncertainty--has become central to the skills our nation needs for students to develop, especially for their future careers in the workforce. An undergraduate student's first formal experience with statistical reasoning frequently occurs in classrooms dominated by lectures rather than active learning experiences. In addition, the classroom instructors often are relatively untrained in statistics. This is especially true at two-year colleges where adjunct instructors can find it difficult to take part in professional development opportunities, often perceive reform-based pedagogies as taking 'extra work' when they already have an unreasonable workload, perceive new resources as being difficult to integrate into their current mode of instruction, and recognize the frequent severe 'statistics anxiety' in their students. SMILES (Student-Made Interactive Learning with Educational Songs) for Introductory Statistics--a collaborative project from Pennsylvania State University - University Park, the University of Texas at El Paso, and Georgia Perimeter College--will develop and field-test an innovation in online learning in introductory statistics, where students create a song by filling in key words associated with a learning objective. These interactive songs will challenge students to make conceptual connections and construct examples or context, thereby fostering statistical literacy and reasoning skills. Through a reduction in statistics anxiety (a key impediment to student success) and an accompanying enhancement of student learning, the potential impact is striking.The underlying goal of the project is to develop resources that require little instructor time or expertise, but have a high impact on developing statistical literacy and reasoning and on reducing statistics anxiety. In connection with this, interactive songs will provide a novel learning resource that holds great potential for teaching literacy and reasoning skills in statistics and other STEM disciplines. The web-based, machine-run, and auto-graded characteristic of this resource will provide easy access to students anywhere anytime, and will address instructor hesitations regarding in-class use. For instructors, interactive songs will be readily adoptable regardless of pedagogy (e.g., as easily incorporated in a flipped class as in an online class, or a lecture/lab course), and will provide a simple bridge to the statistics education reform movement for groups like two-year college adjunct faculty members who might remain otherwise disconnected. Most importantly, these professional-quality interactive songs will be designed to engage students, lessen anxiety, and foster active learning, thereby leading to improved statistical reasoning skills. To enhance their value, the interactive songs developed by the SMILES project will involve a unique artist/scientist collaborative to create original high-quality musical resources. To evaluate their efficacy and assess the value of interactive songs in enhancing student learning and reducing student anxiety, the project team will conduct a randomized controlled field test involving twenty (20) college level introductory statistics instructors for which fifteen (15) will be from two-year colleges. Response variables will include student answers to multiple-choice assessment items and levels of anxiety as measured by a pre-Statistics Anxiety Measure (SAM) and post-SAM measurement. Since students from the two-year colleges consist predominately of African American and Hispanic student populations, the research findings of the project will expand knowledge of best practices for addressing the national need to broaden participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) discipline areas.