Statistical analysis is playing an ever expanding role in public, scientific and business policy making. In a recent survey conducted by Dr. Monticino for the Mathematical Association of America, the quantitative skill that survey respondents indicated they used most in their work was statistics. The annual enrollment in the course since approval has nearly tripled to around 900 students. Statistics is a discipline which demands to be taught in an applied context. The best way to accomplish this is through a project based course.
Projects help students more critically consider the relationship between theory and application.
Moreover, projects force students to be less passive and take responsibility for learning and applying concepts. This is essential for a successful distributed learning course. The primary objective of the proposed work is to develop a project based distributed learning statistics course. The need for such a course has become more evident as student demographics have changed. These students typically have intense work and family pressures which force them to miss classes, do not allow them to attend instructor office hours, and restrict their ability to use on-campus statistics tutoring services.