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:
- Introduction / Motivation of the students
- Theory (if required)
- Examples
- Hands-on experience for the students (exercices using the Web-tools)
- Short quiz using the Web (optional)
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:
- Basic graphics (histogram, stem-and-leaf plot...)
- Summary statistics (mean, median, variance...)
- Probability
- Linear regression
- Normal distribution
- Normal approximation to binomial distribution
- Confidence intervals and hypothesis testing
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.