Teaching Statistics in Psychology

Martin Le Voi

Statistics is hard to understand

• At least for psychologists…• Many psychology departments struggle with

explaining it• Students struggle• Every lecturer has a pet way of teaching• Is the problem with “one-size-fits-all”

How do you understand the “mean”

• The central tendency of a group of numbers• The expected value of a random variable• As an equation:

€

x1i=1

n

∑

n

€

S = (xi − y)2

i=1

n

∑

In pictures?

As a simulation?

As a song?!!

http://resources4statistics.typepad.com/blog/2010/03/mean-median-and-mode-song.html

Students learn in different ways

• Well, they claim some things are easier than others

• Some text books are easier than others• And it never seems unanimous• Certainly some concepts can be explained in

different ways

The Matching Hypothesis

• If you teach a student in concordance with their learning style, learning will be optimised

• But what is Learning Style?• And how do you teach to it?• Masser & Mayer (2006). ATI hypothesis: fails!

The ATI Hypothesis

• Masser & Mayer (2006).• Visual student, visual instruction GOOD• Visual Student, verbal instruction BAD• Verbal student, visual instruction BAD• Verbal Student, verbal instruction GOOD

Fails…

Dodge the problem!

• Find and evaluate existing OERs for teaching statistics

• Classify by teaching approach• Invite students to self-assess by sampling

quality materials in different approaches• Automate the process!

Search for psychometrically valid learning style assessment

• Mayer & Masser 2003• Factor Analysed 14 measures togetherBest are:• MLPQ Cronbach’s alpha 0.8, “retest” 0.59• Loads 0.98/0.54 on Learning Preference factor• VVLS loads 0.83 on Cognitive Style factor,

(0.38 on MLPQ)• Coded both into OpenLearn (demo)

Finding resources: the problem

• http://psych.hanover.edu/aps/teaching.html#statistics

• http://it.stlawu.edu/~rlock/tise98/onepage.html• http://www.stat.duke.edu/sites/java.html• Problem of evaluation• Merlot http://www.merlot.org/

Merlot

• Merlot has a systematic peer review system• http://www.merlot.org/• Peer review example (file)• Clear winner for Visualisation teachinghttp://www.seeingstatistics.com/

OpenLearn courses in development

1. Learning Statistics by visualisation2. Learning Statistics by graphics (maybe too similar

to 1)3. Learning Statistics by algebra and textNot in OpenLearn:4. Learning Statistics: the non-linear approach (to be

prepared in Prezi: http://prezi.com/)