do computer-based learner activities contribute to psychology students’ understanding of descriptive statistics?
E. J. Morris, R. Joiner & E. Scanlon, Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University & Psychology Department, University of Bath Email: E.J.Morris@open.ac.uk Psychology students often find statistical concepts difficult, and research has suggested that students can hold confusions about seemingly straightforward concepts, such as the mean. Although previous research has evaluated computer-based learning systems for statistics, there is little research that has looked specifically at whether particular computer-based learner activities contribute to students’ understanding of introductory concepts in statistics. The study described in this paper was designed to investigate whether computer-based activities that provide multiple representations of concepts contribute to students’ understanding of correlations and measures of central tendency. A pre-/post-test control group design was used involving 50 students who were studying psychology. It was found that activities involving
