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

在我们这个日益以数据为中心的世界里，统计推理——特别是在不确定性背景下对数据的推理——已经成为我们国家需要学生发展的核心技能，尤其是对他们未来的职业生涯。本科生的第一次正式的统计推理经验经常发生在课堂上的讲座，而不是积极的学习经验。此外，课堂教师往往没有受过统计学方面的培训。这在两年制大学中尤其如此，在那里，兼职教师很难参与到专业发展的机会中来，往往认为基于改革的教学法在他们已经有了不合理的工作量的情况下需要“额外的工作”，认为新资源很难融入他们目前的教学模式，并认识到他们的学生经常出现严重的“统计焦虑”。美国宾夕法尼亚州立大学帕克分校（University Park）、德克萨斯大学埃尔帕索分校（University of Texas at El Paso）和乔治亚周边学院（Georgia Perimeter College）的合作项目，将开发并实地测试一项关于介绍性统计学在线学习的创新，学生通过填写与学习目标相关的关键词来创作一首歌。这些互动歌曲将挑战学生建立概念联系和构建示例或上下文，从而培养统计素养和推理技能。通过减少统计焦虑（学生成功的一个关键障碍）和随之而来的学生学习的增强，潜在的影响是惊人的。该项目的基本目标是开发资源，这些资源只需要很少的教师时间或专业知识，但对培养统计素养和推理能力以及减少统计焦虑有很大影响。与此相关，互动歌曲将提供一种新颖的学习资源，对统计学和其他STEM学科的扫盲和推理技能教学具有巨大潜力。该资源基于网络、机器运行和自动评分的特点将为学生提供随时随地的方便访问，并将解决教师在课堂上使用时的犹豫。对于教师来说，无论采用何种教学方法，互动式歌曲都很容易被接受（例如，与在线课程或讲座/实验课程一样容易被纳入翻转课堂），并将为两年制大学兼职教员等群体提供统计学教育改革运动的简单桥梁，否则他们可能会一直保持联系。最重要的是，这些专业质量的互动歌曲将被设计成吸引学生，减轻焦虑，促进主动学习，从而提高统计推理技能。为了提升互动歌曲的价值，SMILES计划将邀请一位独特的艺术家/科学家合作，创造原创的高品质音乐资源。为了评估互动歌曲在促进学生学习和减少学生焦虑方面的效果和价值，项目团队将进行一项随机对照现场测试，涉及20名大学水平的入门统计学讲师，其中15名来自两年制大学。反应变量将包括学生对多项选择题的回答，以及通过统计前焦虑测量（SAM）和统计后焦虑测量来测量的焦虑水平。由于两年制大学的学生主要由非裔美国人和西班牙裔学生组成，该项目的研究成果将扩大对最佳实践的认识，以满足扩大科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）学科领域参与的国家需求。

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.