ONLINE STATISTICS E-LEARNING RESOURCE FOR STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Many undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses require use of statistical methods to analyse and interpret data sets. The extent to which statistics are a main topic of study varies greatly with degree subject, yet knowledge, understanding and appropriate uses of statistics are either essential or highly desirable across most of the sciences and social sciences. It is frequently observed that students attending post-graduate degree courses, in particular, vary widely in their prior knowledge, confidence and expertise with statistics, hence the requirement for resources that students can access independently to refresh or acquire the skills necessary for their courses. For many students, learning statistics is neither easy nor intuitive nor popular. ‘Statistics – an Intuitive Introduction’ (SII) is an e-learning resource developed at the University of Nottingham and accessible via the internet. It teaches students the basics of statistical techniques in a stand-alone, easy-to-use and intuitive way.

The first phase of SII (described in Field et al., 2010) comprises five main learning units: central tendency, variability, graphical display, standard deviation and normal distribution. These units are designed for student-centred learning, by guided discovery at the student’s own pace, and are built around dynamic, interactive tools that allow the student to try things out for themselves. Feedback from students is generally positive, a strong theme being that the interactive, graphical examples in SII help to develop understanding of fundamental concepts and statistical principles. A second phase of development has now been completed, covering concepts and techniques that include standard errors, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing (e.g. t-tests, correlation), ANOVA and simple parameter estimation (e.g. regression). In the 2010-11 academic year, this learning material (phases I & II) is to be delivered to undergraduate and postgraduate students in Geography and Biosciences, attending courses at the University of Nottingham campus and the Ningbo campus at the University of Nottingham in China. This paper will describe development of the second phase of SII and review feedback from students and academic tutors regarding its potential impact as a learning resource. Designed with a focus strongly on developing an intuitive understanding of statistics, it is envisaged that SII will be an important, general resource for students in higher education, both within the University of Nottingham and beyond.