Christian Ostlund

Navigating in a New Pedagogical Landscape with an Introductory Course in Applied Statistics

During the last few decades, a great deal of effort has been put into improving statistical education, focusing on how students learn statistics and how we as teachers can find effective ways to help them. At the same time the use of computers, the Internet, and learning management systems has grown rapidly, and offers new educational possibilities. In this chapter, we will discuss how these changes in the pedagogical landscape have affected our introductory course in applied statistics. The course and teaching context are presented in relation to guidelines for assessment and instruction in statistics and to seven principles for effective teaching. Teaching strategies, course content, and examples of course material are included. Furthermore, results from evaluations are discussed, especially focusing on diversity in student characteristics. These results indicate a variation in learning styles both between and within groups. Finally, we present some of our ideas for future development including strategies for individualization and the use of educational mining.

Towards adapting authentic learning for formal work-integrated e-learning

This poster reports from the initial steps of formulating a prescriptive design theory to support the development of scholastic/formal work-integrated e-learning systems. For this purpose a framework for authentic learning, developed and evaluated in a school setting and the eight components of design theories by Gregor and Jones has been used to guide two e-learning activities in a work setting. Adapting authentic learning to a formal work-integrated e-learning context calls for a simplification of the framework where some elements of authentic learning become peripheral whereas others become more central.