Web-based Statistics
Lecture 5
Monday, May 15, 2000

Electronic Textbooks


Student presentations: Electronic Textbooks

Cyberstatistics Textbook: http://www.cyberk.com

Homework 6

Part I: (50 Points) - due for presentation on 5/18/00

Work of 2 students:

After having seen all these teachware tools and electronic textbooks and after having read a large number of articles on Web-based technology for teaching, it is now up to you to prepare an electronic "Introductory Statistics" lecture.

You have to work in groups of 2 students and have to choose one of the topics listed below. You have to prepare and present in the class an 18 minute lecture on your topic (note that students do not like instuctors who overrun their lecture time ;-). Your lecture should be entirely or at least partially Web-based. It should include:


You can use any electronic textbook and teachware tool you want. You can also split the in-class teaching in any way you want, e.g., one person presenting the lecture and the other person demonstrating the concepts with the computer, or just one person doing all the lecturing.

You can choose one of the following topics:

Part II: (20 Points) - due 5/22/00

Individual work:

You have seen 4 different lectures now (in addition to your own lecture). Now is the time for detailed course evaluations for each of these 4 lectures. You have to comment on how effective each of these lectures was. What was good, bad, boring, interesting? How well have the Web-based tools/textbooks been used? For which of these 4 presented topics do you think the presentation was more effective than the pure "chalk and textbook" approach that is still used for many introductory statistics classes?

If you have any other comments, also write these down.

While your answers to Part II of this question will be distributed (anonymously) to everyone else in class you will receive points (individually) for the quality of your evaluations. Just writing "I liked all lectures" or "They were all boring" most likely will only result in 1 point for you.

Part III: (50 Points) - due 5/22/00

Work of 2 students:

In your lecture you probably used only one electronic textbook or teachware tools from one or two different Web sites.

Now you should carefully explain (on 3 to 5 pages) why you decided to use these tools/textbook and not any of the others that are available on the Web covering the same topic. In particular, what are the advantages and what are the disadvantages of the different tools and textbooks? Why did you decide to use a textbook and not only teachware tools (or vice versa)? And which advantages (if any) do you think your electronic lecture has compared to a "classical" lecture with board and textbook?


For this homework, you should start with reading the papers on Web-based teaching that have been distributed in class. Which teachware tools are presented, which electronic textbooks are mentioned, which links are given? Use these papers as your starting point - but look for other sources (printed or on the Web) on your topic as well. Experiment with several of the tools and textbooks before you decide which one(s) to use for your class presentation. Are they all correct or could it happen that a probability is less than 0, a variance is negative, or some other result is obviously nonsense? In your report, do not only list the good things, also list the bad things. Indicate the references you used and let the reader know where he/she can find more information on a particular tool or textbook.