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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 844 – 851

1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, Sakarya Universitesi, Turkey.doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.406

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13thInternational Educational Technology Conference

Student Centered Learning in Statistics: Analysis of Systematic Review

Hairulliza Mohamad Judia,*and Noraidah Saharia

aSchool of Information Technology, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Malaysia

Abstract

This paper reports the initial results of research relatedto student-centered learning in statistics education. Student-centered learning (SCL) suggests students to engage actively as doers in education setting who are empowered to decide on what, when, where, and how to learn. Although SCL in statistics instruction research has rapidly increased, there is little study to evaluate and synthesize the results of relevant research in this area, specifically within the context of computer support education. The objective of this paper is to identify the direction of recent research in SCL usage in statistics teaching and learning. Four research questions were raised in this study: What are the important issues in student centered concept in statistics teaching and learning? What are the SCL methods in statistics course? Which methods are used in statistics education research? What type of computer supported material sources involved? This paper applies systematic review to summarize the research by performing synthesis on research resources. Results of the review were presented and discussed in the paper. © 2013The Authors.Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, SakaryaUniversitesi, Turkey.

Keywords:Student-centered learning; Statistics; systematic review

1. Introduction

Traditionally, teaching and learning processes are conducted actively by instructors or teachers. This approach is now replaced by student-centered learning (SCL). SCL provides an environment where students play more active role in obtaining knowledge by accessing key materials and resources in the learning process. SCL suggests major changes in the central issue of teaching and learning.Lu et al. (2007) summarize the main transformation in education key factors quoted by Oblinger& Maruyama (1996) in terms of the role of instructor

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +603-89216653; fax: +60389256732. E-mail address: [email protected]

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© 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology-TASET, Sakarya Universitesi, Turkey.

845 Hairulliza Mohamad Judi and Noraidah Sahari / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 103 ( 2013 ) 844 – 851

and student, and the notions of place and time. SCL suggest the instructor to play a role as a learning facilitator instead of a learning organizer. Meanwhile, students engage actively as doers in education setting who are empowered to decide on what, when, where, and how to learn.

Implementation of SCL in statistics education as in the case of other subjects require preparation include education program, course content, learning outcome and general experience with the subject. The general assumption of statistics education at university level typically highlight the difficulty of the course content, relevancy to future job specification and the attitude of nothing could change the initial perception of the course (Gonzalez et al, 2010 ).

Although SCL in statistics instruction research has rapidly increased, there is little study to evaluate and synthesize the results of relevant research in this area, specifically within the context of computer support education. The objective of this paper is to identify the direction of recent research in SCL usage in statisticsteaching and learning. Four research questions were raised in this study: What are the important issues in student centered concept in statistics teaching and learning? What are the methods used in SCL for statistics course? Which methods are used in statistics education research? What type of computer supported material sources involved?

2. Student-centered learning

SCL model suggests that students are flexible and empowered individual to access important sources of knowledge (Lu et al, 2007). These resources may include course instructor, course material, library and internet that provides most of the materials, other students as peer in the learning process. With the availability of ICT, students have more flexible access to multiple resources including the library, the Internet, instructors, other students, lecture, and other school. Figure 1 presents this relationship.

Fig. 1. Student-centered learning (Oblinger and Maruyama, 1996)

SCL environment consists of a number of methods. Among the important methods are computer supported collaborative learning, collaborative learning, problem-based learning, active learning and cooperative learning. In computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments, students collaborate together to solve a problem with the help of computer technology. CSCL trains students with important procedure by sharing their thoughts, exploring

Student

Library

Internet

Instructor

Other School

Student

Lecture


computer tool to construct solution and using skills in a knowledge building to solve the given problems (De Corte, Verschaffel, &Eynde, 2000).

Collaborative learningitself is a method that enables students to work together through the process of collaboration and brainstorming to retrieve vast amount of informationefficiently, in a meaningful way to create new ideas or to accomplish learning tasks (Lipponen, 2002). Problem-based learning (PBL) method suggests that students to be guided to work in small groups where they identify what they do and do not know, and what information they need to solve the problem at hand (Baturay and Bay, 2010). Therefore, students in PBL method take responsibility for and get involved in their learning, whereas instructors are responsible for organizing suitable content that represent real problem to be solved and to facilitate group processes and learning. In this method, students are required to apply and develop critical thinking and working in team.

Cooperative learning (CL) involves small groups for example two students who work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning(Johnson & Johnson, 1998).Four types of team work are introduced in CL i.e. formal, informal, cooperative base groups, and academic controversy that provide one another with efficient and effective help and assistance. CL emphasizesgroup members to exchange information or materials, discuss the concepts and strategies being learned, decide how to solve problems, and provide for the necessary support and encouragement (Johnson & Johnson, 1996).In active learning environment, students were trained to think critically and reflectively helped them become self-directed learners(Justice et al., 2007). As a consequent, they were able to weigh evidence from a variety of sources, synthesize information, and communicate their ideas.

3. Method

The method for this study applies systematic review. Kitchenham and Charters (2007) define systematic review is a process for identifying, evaluating and interpreting research materials to answer a number of research questions. The purpose of systematic review is to summarize the research by performing synthesis on research resources. The review process is conducted in systematic procedure. It provides means or ways to conduct a literature reviewusing extensive and comprehensive strategies based on severaldefined stages (Norsarimah, 2008). The method could be categorized intothree major phases. In design phase, the major activities involve identification of the need of the review, development ofthe review protocol and formulation of the research questions. The second phase deals with searching related research. The main activities in the second phase include identification of relevant literature by conducting acomprehensive and exhaustive search and selection of primary studies based oninclusive/exclusive criteria. In the final phasei.e. analysis and interpretation, these procedure are performed: data extraction together with the quality assessment, synthesis of evidence, and interpretation of results and report writing.

The design phase require the researchers to conduct in depth literature review to justify the need of the review. The rational is reported in introduction section. The formulation of research questions produces four useful guidelines to be used in the review:What are the important issues in student centered concept in statistics teaching and learning?What are the methods used in SCL for statistics course?What kind of test was used to evaluate SCL implementation in statistics course?What type of computer supported material sources involved? The second phase deals with searching related research. The main activities in the second phase include identification of relevant literature by conducting acomprehensive and exhaustive search and selection of primary studies based oninclusive/exclusive criteria.

To examine relevant research in the second phase, the researchersidentify relevant literature. The researchers conduct database search on SCL in statistics instruction using prominent sources: Elsevier, Sage, ERIC and IEEE. These data bases were identified as a source of information domain because top ranking journals in education are widely covered and published, including the publication of conferences e.g. International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems (ICMCS), International Conference on Education


Technology and Computer (ICETC), and International Conference on Information and Multimedia Technology (ICIMT). The review protocol applies two keywords i.e. "Student-Centered Learning" and "Statistics”.

Theinclusive criteria are as listed: Research papers published between the years 2005 - 2011;Research paper that discusses the topic of SCL in statistics education. Meanwhile, the rejection of a research papers are those that meet this criteria: Research papers published other than English;Research papers outside the domain of SCL in statistics education. The analysis and interpretation is discussedin the next section.

4. Results and Discussions

The search protocol produces 67 research papers.Using the exclusive criteria, 20 papers were rejected leaving only 47 papers to be accepted for analysis. The percentage for valid paper is 70% from the initial 67 retrieved research papers.Table 1 summarizes the result. The entire result would be presented according to the intended research questions.

Table 1. Paper reviewed

Paper Number

Total fulfill inclusive criteria 67

Total fulfill exclusive criteria 20

Total valid 47

4.1. Research question 1: Issues ofSCL in statisticseducation

A number of issues were identified from the research paper. Table 2 presents the distribution of issues. Each paper brings at least one issue:main issue and additional issue, if available. The important issues are techniques of teaching and learning, assessment of technique, computer supported learning: design and development, interaction, motivation and attitude, ability and aptitude.

Regarding techniques of teaching and learning in statistic SCL, many aspects were discussed. Sung and Hwang (2013) emphasise the need for proper teaching and learning design to ensure intended result could be achieved. Without proper designsuitable learning support, negative impacts of employing computer game in statistics instruction could occur.Tsai (2010) andSendag and Odabasi (2009) discuss the suitable environment for efficient teaching and learning to take place such as help by instructor are needed to seek information and solve problems in spoon feed environment. Ke (2013) and Schoor and Bannert (2011) were interested in the interaction in learning activities and motivation on knowledge acquisition during SCL session.

The second issue,assessment of techniqueemerge due to the need to conduct empirical study that support the usefulness of teaching and learning method, specifically within the context of teaching statistics This may include learning tool such as video podcasts (Kay and Kletskin, 2012; Lloyd and Robertson, 2012), computer system (González et al, 2010),integrated computer technology (Lowerison et al 2006) or teaching method (Harpe et al, 2012).

The design and development of computer support were considered important issue because the use of computer technology may motivate students in the learning experience of statistics (Lopez-Morteo and Lopez, 2007). Computer learning tool was designed to suit the selected learning method such as PBL scenario for Statistic course (Nurnadiah et al, 2009), or to be able to generate different statistical exercises and to provide immediate feedback to students’ answers(González et al, 2010).Issues on interaction, motivation and attitude, and ability and aptitude were also receivedattention from researchers. For example, Lin (2010) evaluates the interaction among students in the collaborative problem posing and solving learning system and understands their


intention to use.Lloyd and Robertson 2012 assess the effect of screencast tutorials on learning outcomes, including statistical knowledge, application, and interpretation.

Table 2. Identified issues

Issue Main issue Second issue

Techniques of teaching and learning 29 0

Assessment of technique 14 9

Computer supported learning, design n development

2 7

Interaction, motivation and attitude 2 6

Ability and aptitude 0 4

No issue 0 21

Total 47 47

4.2. Research question 2: SCL Method used in statistics education

There are ten identified methods used in the research paper, as in Table 3. Computer supported collaborative learning,collaborative learning and problem-based learning appear to be the most widely used SCL method. According to Lazakidou and Retalis (2010) computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) allows students to jointly work out a solution to a problem, engage themselves to the knowledge building process using computer technology. Combinationof SCL methods werealso used in statistics teaching and learning (Cavanagh, 2011). This result implies that statistics instructors are required to be more flexible, to use combination of traditional teaching approach with other techniques in lecture and tutorial to make the session more interesting.

Table 3. SCL method

Item Number

Computer supported collaborative learning 10

Collaborative learning 9

Problem-based learning 10

Active learning 6

Cooperative learning 4

Inquiry-based learning 2

Service learning 1

Schema-based learning 1

Computer support 3

General SCL 1

Total 47

4.3. Research question 3: Method used in statistics education research

Table 4 presents the method of statistics education research. Experiment appears to be the most widely used approach in this topic (Sung and Hwang, 2013;Lazakidou and Retalis, 2013; Chiu and Hsiao, 2010; Tsai, 2010; Chang et al., 2012; Schoor and Bannert, 2011, Mercier and Frederikson, 2007; Jitendra et al., 2011; Harpe et al,


2012).Among the reason to use this method is due to statistical controlled design in the study to examine the impact of teaching style on learning (Giles et al, 2006).

The use of survey was also relevant, especially to assess students’ attitude towards statistics (Hall and Buzwell, 2013) and to measure students’ perception on the extent to which the lecture activities helped them to learn and understand the course content (Cavanagh, 2011). Case study was used to expand the methodology involved in the lesson study process as well as some practical ideas for its implementation (Davis and Blanchard, 2004; Roback et al, 2006).

Table 4. Research method

Item Number

Experiment 26

Survey 9

Case study 8

Secondary data 2

Interview 2

Total 47

4.4. Research question 4: Types of computer used in statistics education

Half of the papers were using computer technology in statistics instruction (refer Table 5). The computer technology used was categorized either as statistics learning tool/ multimedia, web-media system, e-workbook or game. These computer technology was used in statistics courses to improve the statistical abilities of students by continuously engaging these students to certain activities that could develop their understanding in long run without much intervention and supervision by instructor, who would be far from the student’s sight (Jover et al, 2010).

Among the proposed statistics learning tools involve linear and non-linear multimedia courseware (Nurnadiah, 2009), Interactive Instructors of Recreational Mathematics (Lopez-Morteo and Lopez, 2007), and a randomized statistical exercises tool (González et al, 2010). Web-based system or tools such as problem-based video podcasts were used to teach the subject (Kay and Kletskin, 2012).Web-based classroom technology including podcasting, vodcasting, and screencasting, is on the rise in higher education (Lloyd and Robertson, 2012).

Table 5. Computer technology

Item Number

Statistics learning tool/ multimedia 7

Web-media system e.g. Wikipedia 7

E-Workbook 7

Game 3

Not using 23

Total 47


5. Conclusion

The initial results of research related to student-centered learning in statistics education. Systematic review was used to summarize SCL related research in statistics by performing synthesis on research resources. The results suggest a few emerging issues in SCL, identify the SCL methods in teaching statistics, discover research methods used by researcher in this domain and determine computer technology used in statistics SCL classroom. The finding from this paper may givessome direction of recent research in SCL usage in statistics teaching and learning.

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