Using Clickers to Address Common Errors and Misconceptions in Statistics

ABSTRACT

Using clickers in the statistics classroom can help students identify and understand common errors and misconceptions through a combination of surprise and discussion. Students are presented with multiple-choice questions that they discuss with each other and then vote on; a class-wide discussion follows. Questions for which many students vote for the same wrong answer and questions that reveal a common misconception jolt students’ attention and lead to fruitful discussions. To identify the questions that most effectively target misconceptions, we recorded the percentage of the class voting on each of the possible responses on every clicker question used in 28 sections of introductory statistics courses taught by 3 instructors at 2 institutions. For each question, we identified the distractor that attracted the highest percent of votes on average. We present and discuss the six questions for which this average was at least 50%. We find that each of these question statements is fairly brief and tightly focused on a particular common error or misconception.

KEYWORDS:

• Statistics
• clickers
• classroom voting
• peer instruction
• classroom response systems

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research has been made possible through the generosity of the W. M. Keck Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Kelly S. Cline

Kelly S. Cline is a professor at Carroll College in Helena, Montana, where he has used classroom voting since 2005.

David A. Huckaby

David A. Huckaby received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from UCLA. He is now Professor of Mathematics at Angelo State University, where he enjoys teaching any area of mathematics, always focusing on fundamental ideas.

Holly Zullo

Holly Zullo is Associate Director for Research Development at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. She has used classroom voting in a variety of courses for several years. She was a co-PI on the NSF-funded grants MathQuest and Math Vote, projects that developed materials for and studied the pedagogy of classroom voting. In her free time, Holly enjoys cycling and hiking all around Utah.