An Interpretive Business Statistics Course Encompassing Diverse Teaching and Learning Styles (2007)

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to describe the major elements of a redesigned introductory business statistics course based on a learner-centered approach to teaching. Diverse learning styles are recognized and multiple teaching styles are incorporated to improve student learning. The redesigned course focuses on the interpretation and implications of statistical results through real business problems and data while relegating the mechanical steps of computation via formulae to the background. The philosophy that are responsible for their is embraced; thus, a mastery approach to learning was adopted utilizing pre-lecture, post-lecture and lab web quizzes all with multiple attempts allowed. Cooperative learning serves as a common thread in the course through the use of student teams in lectures, labs and two project assignments. Team projects require students to create business reports in which all statistical jargon is translated into everyday language. INTRODUCTION The redesigned introductory business statistics course described in this paper is a result of efforts focused on meeting the concerns of three primary constituents: students, instructors, and central administrators. voiced their concerns via course evaluations. Many viewed the previous course content as dull and mechanical without direct application to real business problems. Instructors teaching the course expressed concern and frustration that students spent most of their time struggling to learn the mechanics and usually not gaining mastery of basic statistical concepts and their use. Central administrators were concerned about improving student retention for various university gateway courses that included the introductory business statistics course. To address these concerns the authors adopted an interpretive, learner-centered approach and redesigned the introductory business statistics course. The major elements of the redesigned course and the interpretive approach to teaching upon which they are based are described below. The move to alternative approaches in introductory statistics classes is well established in mathematics and statistics departments, but little is known about how they are integrated into other disciplines including business (Moore, 1997a; Garfield, Hogg, Schau, & Whittinghill, 2002). The American Statistical Association (ASA) funded program Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) created two draft reports of recommendations for introductory statistics courses at the college level and statistics education in Pre K-12 years (http://it.stlawu.edu/~rlock/gaise/). While not specifically aimed at business statistics, these draft reports contain some of the features in our redesigned course. The Making Statistics Effective in Schools and Business (MSESB) group has held conferences since 1986 (http://www.msmesb.org/). While many papers presented at these conferences encourage interaction between teachers and students as they learn, the overwhelming majority of the conference papers deal with how to best teach a specific topic. Only two articles contain individual features of our redesigned course. Our new approach to teaching business statistics is learner-centered and focused on intuitive interpretations of computer generated statistical output with heavy emphasis on addressing real business problems. It is based on how business students actually use statistics in higher-level business courses and how they will use statistics in the business world. As noted in the heavily cited article by Felder and Silverman (1988): Students learn in many ways . . . Teaching methods also vary . . . Mismatches exist between common learning styles of engineering students and traditional teaching styles of engineering professors. We have witnessed a similar phenomenon in teaching statistics at a business school. Felder and Silverman (1988) classify preferred learning styles into four dimensions: (1) sensory/intuitive, (2) visual/verbal, (3) active/reflective, and (4) sequential/global. …