This project equips a 24-workstation computer classroom to be used by a new introductory course in statistics. The Statistical Reasoning course replaces two large enrollment courses taught by Statistics and Psychology faculty, each of which is a required course for more than one major. This new course is an interdisciplinary team taught course. The Statistical Toolkit project improves statistical education at Coe College in three ways. 1 ) The Statistical Reasoning course has been designed by a team of faculty representing the Mathematical Sciences, Business Administration and Economics, Psychology, and Biology Departments, and incorporates the best ideas about how to teach statistical concepts in use in those disciplines. 2) The course operates as two independent 7-week modules, each accomplishing separate goals. The first module introduces the use of statistical techniques to explore the characteristics of samples and builds a foundation for hypothesis testing. The second half of the course moves from this common start to a unique, discipline-specific laboratory which investigates methods in a statisticians' toolkit: goodness-of-fit, ANOVA designs, correlation and regression and multiple regression. In this way, the Statistical Reasoning course benefits from a tightly designed, interactive foundation module and yet adopts a teaching style and develops examples best suited to each user-discipline. 3) All sections of the course start with Statistical Foundations, a web-based 'virtual' course which presently uses the JavaScnpt simulations, statistical software and conferencing capabilities of the Coe Intranet to illustrate basic statistical concepts. Transition to the new classroom will allow this project to take advantage of the interactivity of Java and expand the hands-on nature of the course material. It will also extend the use of these materials to all students in introductory statistics courses.
