INITIAL ATTITUDES TOWARD STATISTICS ARE BETTER IN TRADITIONAL COMPARED TO ONLINE COURSES, AT LEAST UNTIL COVID-19
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52041/serj.v21i3.90Keywords:
Statistics education research, Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics, College teaching, Undergradaute education, Course format, PandemicAbstract
We examined students’ initial and concluding attitudes toward statistics based on course delivery methods. Students enrolled in either traditional or online undergraduate statistics courses (N = 196) completed the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics-36. At the beginning of the semester, students in traditional courses felt better about the course and believed it would be easier, compared to students taking statistics online. Attitude differences, however, were mitigated as traditional courses were forced online by the pandemic, and distinct attitudinal differences were not observed at the semester’s end. With limited offerings and restrictions on the delivery of traditional courses in the COVID-19 era, statistics educators should be cognizant of student attitudes, their potential for change, and how to best influence positive attitude shifts for different instructional formats.
References
Allen, E., & Seaman, J. (2006). Making the grade: Online education in the United States. Sloan-C.
Bateiha, S., Marchionda, H., & Autin, M. (2020). Teaching style and attitudes: A comparison of two collegiate introductory statistics classes. Journal of Statistics Education, 28(2), 154–164. https://doi.org/10.1080/10691898.2020.1765710
Bond, M., Perkins., S., & Ramirez, C. (2012). Students’ perceptions of statistics: An exploration of attitudes, conceptualizations, and content knowledge of statistics. Statistics Education Research Journal, 11(2), 6–25. https://doi.org/10.52041/serj.v11i2.325
Coetzee, S., & Van der Merwe, P. (2010). Industrial psychology students’ attitudes towards statistics. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology/SA Tydskrif vir Bedryfsielkunde, 36(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip.v36i1.843
Conners, F. A., McCown, S. M., & Roskos-Ewoldsen, B. (1998). Unique challenges in teaching undergraduate statistics. Teaching of Psychology, 25(1), 40–42. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328023top2501_12
DeVaney, T. A. (2010). Anxiety and attitude of graduate students in on-campus vs. online statistics courses. Journal of Statistics Education, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/10691898.2010.11889472
DeVellis, R. F. (2012). Scale development: Theory and application (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Erdogan, Y., Bayram, S., & Deniz, L. (2008). Factors that influence academic achievement and attitudes in web based education. International Journal of Instruction, 1(1), 32–47.
Gal, I. (2002). Adults’ statistical literacy: Meanings, components, responsibilities. International Statistical Review, 70(1), 1–25.
Gundlach, E., Richards, K., Nelson, D., & Levesque-Bristol, C. (2015). A comparison of student attitudes, statistical reasoning, performance, and perceptions for web-augmented traditional, fully online, and flipped sections of a statistical literacy class. Journal of Statistics Education, 23(1), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/10691898.2015.11889723
Heretick, D. M. L., & Tanguma, J. (2020). Anxiety and attitudes toward statistics and research among younger and older nontraditional adult learners. The Journal of Continuing Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/07377363.2020.1784690
Humphrey, E. A., & Wiles, J. R. (2021). Lessons learned through listening to biology students during a transition to online learning in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ecology and Evolution, 11(8), 3450–3458. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7303
Johnson, G. M. (2019). On-campus and fully-online university students: Comparing demographics, digital technology use and learning characteristics. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 12(1), 1–13. http://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol12/iss1/4
Khavenson, T., Orel, E., & Tryakshina, M. (2012). Adaptation of Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics (SATS 36) for Russian sample. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 46, 2126–2129. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.05.440
Krug, K. S., Dickson, K. W., Lessit, J. A., & Vassar, J. S. (2016). Student preference rates for predominantly online, compressed, or traditionally taught university courses. Innovative Higher Education, 41, 255–267. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10755-015-9349-0
Miltiadous, A., Callahan. D. L., & Schultz, M. (2020). Exploring engagement as a predictor of success in the transition to online learning in first year chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 2494–2501. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00794
Nolan, M. M., Beran, T., & Hecker, K. G. (2012). Surveys assessing students’ attitudes toward statistics: A systematic review of validity and reliability. Statistics Education Research Journal, 11(2), 103–123. https://doi.org/10.52041/serj.v11i2.333
Nunez, J. R., & Leeuwner, J. (2020). Changing courses in midstream: COVID-19 and the transition to online delivery in two undergraduate chemistry courses. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 2819–2824. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00781
Parker, S. W., Hansen, M. A., & Bernadowski, C. (2021). COVID-19 campus closures in the United States: American student perceptions of forced transition to remote learning. Social Sciences, 10(2), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10020062
Rad, F. A., Otaki F., Baqain Z., Zary, N., & Al-Halabi, M. (2021). Rapid transition to distance learning due to COVID-19: Perceptions of postgraduate dental learners and instructors. PLoS ONE, 16(2). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246584
Ramirez, C., Schau, C., & Emmioglu, E. (2012). The importance of attitudes in statistics education. Statistics Education Research Journal, 11(2), 57–71. https://doi.org/10.52041/serj.v11i2.329
Roy, S., & Covelli, B. (2021). COVID-19 induced transition from classroom to online mid semester: Case study on faculty and students’ preferences and opinions. Higher Learning Research Communications, 11(0), 10–32. https://doi.org/10.18870/hlrc.v11i0.1197
Ruggeri, K., Dempster, M., Hanna, D., & Cleary, C. (2008). Experiences and expectations: The real reason nobody likes stats. Psychology Teaching Review, 14(2), 75–83.
Sarikaya, E., Ok, A., Aydin, Y., & Schau, C. (2018). Turkish version of the survey of attitudes toward statistics: Factorial structure invariance by gender. International Journal of Higher Education, 7(2), 121–127. https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v7n2p121
Schau, C. (2003a). Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS-36). http://evaluationandstatistics.com
Schau, C. (2003b). Students’ attitudes: The “other” important outcome in statistics education. In Proceedings of the 2003 Joint Statistical Meetings, San Francisco (pp. 3673–3683). http://statlit.org/pdf/2003SchauASA.pdf
Schau, C., & Emmioglu, E. (2012). Do introductory statistics courses in the United States improve students' attitudes? Statistics Education Research Journal, 11(2), 86–94. https://doi.org/10.52041/serj.v11i2.331
Suanpang, P., Petocz, P., & Kalceff, W. (2004). Student attitudes to learning business statistics: Comparison of online and traditional methods. Educational Technology and Society, 7(3), 9–20.
Tempelaar, D., & Schim van der Loeff, S. (2007). A structural equation model analyzing the relationship of students' attitudes toward statistics, prior reasoning abilities, and course performance. Statistics Education Research Journal, 6(2), 78–102. https://doi.org/10.52041/serj.v6i2.486
Wang, P., Palocsay, S. W., Shi, J., & White, M. M. (2018). Examining undergraduate students’ attitudes toward business statistics in the United States and China. Innovative Higher Education, 16(3), 197–216. https://doi.org/10.1111/dsji.12159
Weldy, T. (2018). Traditional, blended, or online: Business student preferences and experience with different course formats. e-Journal of Business Education and Scholarship of Teaching, 12(2), 55–62.
Xu, C., & Schau, C. (2020). Measuring statistics attitudes at the student and instructor levels: A multilevel construct validity study of the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 39(3), 315–331. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0734282920971389
Xu, C., Peters, M., & Brown, S. (2020). Instructor and instructional effects on students’ statistics attitudes. Statistics Education Research Journal, 19(2), 7–26. https://doi.org/10.52041/serj.v19i2.107
Zare-ee, A., & Shekarey, A. (2010). The effects of social, familial, and personal factors on students’ course selection in Iranian technical schools. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 9, 295–298. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.12.153
Zieffler, A., Garfield, J., Alt, S., Dupuis, D., Holleque, K., & Chang, B. (2008). What does research suggest about the teaching and learning of introductory statistics at the college level? A review of the literature. Journal of Statistics Education [Online], 16(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10691898.2008.11889566