Teaching an Online Elementary Statistics Course

Abstract

According to the 1998-1999 HERI study data about 2% of faculty teach exclusively online. When designing an online course it is important to consider many things. For example, you should consider your students?learning environment. The students may be accessing the course using dial-up connections, which are generally much slower than the Internet connections faculty enjoy in their offices. Web based courses should have an interactive component; something for the students to do daily. There are many ways to include such a component, ideally this should include writing about the subject because research shows that writing improves student understanding and acquisition of the material. My course is the five-quarter unit (equivalent to three semester units) General Education Statistics course that is taught at CSU Bakersfield. It covers the same material that is normally covered in the traditionally taught course. Students use the same textbook as the traditionally taught classes on campus. In addition to the textbook, students in the web-based course are required to purchase a statistical Software package (Minitab, SPSS, or DataDesk). Grades in the class are based on Interactive Web component (12.5%), ten Weekly Assignments (37.5%), a proctored Midterm (25%), and a proctored Final Exam (25%). The exams are not written or graded differently than those in a traditionally taught class. This presentation describes the course that I teach online and discusses many of the positive and negative outcomes of teaching online.