Ideas for improving statistics education

This paper looks at ideas that have been tried in an effort to dispel some of the negative feelings that students bring with them to introductory statistics courses at university. Relevance, involvement, interaction, use of computers and videos were investigated and the students’ responses monitored. Students enjoyed a break from a standard lecture/tutorial and responded well to participating in experiments, provided that the tutor was enthusiastic. Videos were also appreciated as an alternative mode of presentation, although to gain maximum benefit from videos they must be properly integrated into the course. In an assignment aimed primarily to promote relevance, one group of students found it difficult to see the relevance of statistics to their course as they had difficulty finding suitable data, but another group, who collected and analysed data on a topic of interest, became very interested in the analysis and results. Even though all ideas were inevitably not a complete success at the initial implementation there was ample positive feedback to appreciate the need to keep trying new ideas in order to stimulate interest in introductory statistics.