A New Look to Statistics in the Classroom Professor Laura Shick, Hayden Campbell, and Genevieve Watkins

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Albert Einstein

Service Learning and Critical Thinking: Service Learning and Critical Thinking: Introductory Statistical Inference Work with a community partner Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect Assistance with analysis of effectiveness of Family Life Skills class Pre-post measures of participant knowledge of parenting “skills”

Service-Learning Fosters Civic and Community engagement Builds students awareness of community issues Needs, challenges, opportunities for involvement Allows students to apply classroom learning to real-world issues in the community

Critical Thinking Encourages Students to….. Challenge their assumptions about an issue Child Abuse is……. Analyze a multi-dimensional problem Synthesize alternative solutions to multi-dimensional challenges and communicate those results

The Community Partner The organization has been serving since the early 1990’s Goal is to educate parents on successful parenting practices Keeping children safe Keeping families together

Working with the Community Partner Immediate real-world application with Statistical Analysis We encountered: Lack of a representative population size Ambiguous questionnaire Statistical significance vs. practical significance A real problem in our society: Child Abuse Not just physical abuse (emotional, psychological, verbal)

Results and Conclusions Drawn Matched-Pair Testing Showed significant, positive change Seemed to show improvement, but lacked practicality

The Classroom Experience Approach to statistics was a success Brought application to the classroom Enabled students to gain a real-world perspective on statistics Great learning opportunity for both client and students Mention ongoing Creative Inquiry