Student Engagement in a Hybrid Undergraduate Statistics Course

This project examines the application and evaluation of a variety of instructional technologies in teaching a hybrid version of an intermediate undergraduate statistics class. Specifically, we examine what happened when activities formerly delivered in person (such as lectures) or completed in analog paper-and-pencil format (such as homework) were moved to online platforms, and we discuss strategies for fostering engagement, scaffolding skill development, and assessing learning through a combination of in-person and online efforts.We use two measures of student engagement to evaluate our instructional methods. The first is a measure of students’ use of online resources (such as visiting our site, checking the gradebook, and watching video lessons) developed by the instructor specifically for this class. The second is an index of engagement provided by the online textbook publisher. It is based on the time spent reading the textbook as well as activities performed while reading such as highlighting and searching within the text. Efforts to increase engagement were implemented in Spring 2020 with the expectation for improvements from fall to the current spring semester. Analyses of 58 students from the current and previous semesters indicate that engagement with our online site was a significant predictor of performance on course assignments and assessments, rather than spending time on the online textbook. For example, analyses showed that the visits to the ReggieNet site was significantly correlated with the total amount of homework points earned through mid-semester, r(58) = .29, p = .03 and the scores on Assessment II, r(58) = .40, p = .00. Excitingly, students from the current semester showcased significantly higher scores on total homework points than those from the Fall 2019 course, t(58) = -2.55, p = .01. Although assessment scores were not statistically different between semesters, there were trends in the expected direction with Spring 2020 scores being higher than Fall 2019 scores.https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/urspsych/1030/thumbnail.jp