Affective domain assessment and reactions in a statistics course

During the term in MS 150 Statistics students engaged in eight explorations of data leading to in-class presentations. The following is brief report on student reactions to the presentations and the course more broadly.

Students presenting their findings

The eight explorations began the first week of the term with the last one occurring in the final week of the term.

1: Mars and Murries (MMs)
2: pre and post exercise heart rates
3: ball drop and bounce
4: fibobelly
5: plastic in amphipods
6: global carbon dioxide versus local temperatures
7: soil carbon sequestration under trees
8: FSM family health and safety study data

At term end the students were asked which was their favorite presentation.

The first presentation of the term, MMs, was the most favored open data exploration this term.  The reasons for favoring a presentation provide some context for the above chart.

The first presentation of the term was most favored because the students were able to eat the MMs. Other reasons for favoring a presentation included ease of the analysis and data that was relevant to human lives and thus deemed to be important. The presence of plastic in sea trench amphipods (plastic in seafood), the correlation of warming on Pohnpei to carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, and statistics from a study of domestic violence in the FSM all captured the students personal attention.

Students were also asked to respond to one of the following statements:

1. My learning of the content was most helped when… … because… 

2. The activity that contributed the most to my learning was… … because… 

3. The biggest obstacle for me in my learning the material was… … because… 

4. I was most willing to take risks with learning new material when…        … because… 

5. During the first day, I remember thinking…         … because… 

6. What I think I will remember five years from now is… … because… 

7. What is something you learned to do in this course that you could not do before? … because…

My learning of the content was most helped when...

I was doing everything on my own because it was much more challenging.

Presenting because I learned from other students. 

The activity that contributed the most to my learning was…

[assistance] from colleagues because they are so nice and friendly
Doing open data explorations and presenting them, because it was something I had to do on my own to test my knowledge on what I've been learning in this class and presenting has been something fun for me.

Doing the basic statistics because I never do that when I was in high school
Presentations because I learned how to solve the basic statistics on my own and to present well.

Presentations. It helps me to get out of my comfort box and talk in front of the whole class. At first I was shy, I don't talk to people, and by doing the presentation it help me a lot and knowing the people and communicating with them.
Presentations. They helped me apply my knowledge and skills from what I have learned and heard from the instructor. It make me use my brain. It was quite difficult and I always made mistakes but I learned through them. It was a good challenge, I should say.

The biggest obstacle for me in my learning the material was...
Calculation because it was confusing.
Function because some them I don't know because it is confusing.
Group presentations, I with that issue because in the beginning I would rely more on my partner to do all the work and in return I gained no knowledge until we were given the opportunity to work solo.

I was most willing to take risks with learning new material when new chapters are presented because I am new with some of the formulas.

During the first day, I remember thinking…

How confusing this course would be because of the schedule shown in my Schoology. The was because it helped students to look into a specific topic by clicking on the the topic in a faster and easier way. [Student is referencing the online syllabus on the college site, not technically "in" Schoology. The online syllabus has links for each day/each topic to the relevant section of the text].
"I have a feeling I'm gonna really enjoy this class," because not only did my instructor seem passionate about teaching, but this was also course material I had never been introduced to yet.
"I'm going to enjoy this class." The first day was very fun most especially because of the MMs. I think that first impressions are very important! Thank you for making this learning experience enjoyable for me!

I remember thinking about this course because of the presentations. I am not comfortable standing in front of people talking, and now that I am done with statistics, I can present without being nervous.
Only "I will fail this class. It looks so hard." But no, if we focus and listen we will be okay.

That this class was going to be a hard class because I wasn't very good at math.
That this course was going to be the hardest and that I will fail and not understand anything. Turns out that this was my favorite course and it kind of boost up my self-esteem when presenting.

What I think I will remember five years from now is...

Charts and some basic statistics. Because we always look for basic statistics and charts.
The formulas for the middle of measurement.

The plastics in the sea creatures called amphipods. I cannot believe that humans would have caused so much damage like the making of plastics, and now look at what it has done. If I would get a second chance at studying more of this, I would definitely take it.

The perfect instructor because its hard to find someone like that.
Using my [Google] Drive because I go to it everyday.

What is something you learned to do in this course that you could not do before?

Before I cannot stand in front of people or in a class to do presentation. And this class really improve even just say one word it really help me.
Excel. I never done Excel until I step into this class. I am very grateful for joining this course for I learned a lot. Another thing is Google Drive. Everything in Google Drive. I thought it was only Gmail or Google but thanks to this class, I found Google drive. [Course used Google Sheets, not actually Excel, but students sometimes refer to all spreadsheets as "Excel"]
I have never heard of standard deviation until I took this course.
I learned a lot about statistics mostly like based on how to calculate the basic statistics and how to view them. It really changed me a lot because I learned new stuffs.

I learned a lot of new ways to work with a spreadsheet. In high school I learned the basics but taking this course has taught me how to run a t-test and find confidence intervals, or even understanding statistics jargon. Majoring in marine science we read a lot of reports that use statistics specific words and because of this course I am able to follow along and not get as lost as I probably would. I also learned how to analyze data and figure  out what information is important and what isn't. This helped greatly when I was analyzing data from an assignment I had in another course and was able to pick out the important stuff from the data.
I learned how to do basic statistics, standard deviation, p-value, which I cannot do before because before I didn't know how to calculate mostly the standard deviation and most the basic statistics.
I learned how to use spreadsheets to solve for my basic statistics. In this course we always use spreadsheets or sheets in Drive to solve for our problems given.

I learned many functions I can use in Google sheets.

Presenting, frequently, because it's my biggest fear. However, because of the many presentations I've done, I can present freely.
I would say that everything that was presented in this course. Gave me an idea of how to be a statistician.
Working on the spreadsheet. This course helped me alot on how to work on Excel in Google sheet instead of using formula and calculator. But basically, I enjoyed all of the activities that was given in class to do.

One of the non-statistical intentions of this course is to give students the opportunity to present and to gain confidence in their ability to present. Each term there are students who are fearful of presenting. The course does appear to help fearful students overcome their social anxiety and gain confidence in presenting. Some students may not ever use statistics again, but they are likely to have to stand up in front of other people and present or speak. This is one of those life skills that a class can help impart. 

I was also pleased to see students note that they also learned from their peers, from other students (colleagues in the terminology of one respondent). This is an encouraging result and something that the course tries to foster by permitting students to work on presentations in pairs.

The responses suggest that some of these softer, non-content goals are also being accomplished by the course.