Abstract:

Students have different strengths and different approaches to learning so the assessment process should give opportunities for them to demonstrate their abilities and achieve the relevant learning outcomes. There are varied assessment strategies in statistics, whether in specialist or service courses. Reforms in statistical education at all levels place increasing emphasis on students’ abilities to think and reason statistically using real data in appropriate contexts. The huge expansion in technology has given access to various data sources and advances in statistical software have greatly expanded the range of analyses that can be conducted almost instantaneously. Hence, students can be required to collect and analyse their own or other data; they can be set realistic problems to solve either individually or in groups; they can carry out simple experiments and simulations; they can focus on how to communicate the results of statistical analysis to a non-specialist audience either graphically, verbally or in writing; they can critique the study designs and analyses of others. Different methods of assessment are appropriate for different elements of the curriculum. This paper discusses some issues in the assessment of statistics, including dissemination of outcomes from the Plagiarism in Statistics Assessment (PiSA) project and the Variety in Statistics Assessment (ViSA) project. The paper will also examine novel methods of assessment as found in the book Assessment Methods in Statistical Education: An International Perspective of which the author was co-editor.

Keywords:

assessment, statistical literacy, statistics.