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Show 197 THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH Tremendous computational demands are placed on students in the service of learning statistical concepts. The challenge of teaching statistics is to not overwhelm the student with the computational elements in the early learning stages but rather to leverage the quantitative rigor to facilitate master-ing the concepts and the logic of statistics. The delicate tap-dance between computational demands and conceptual mastery can be greatly facilitated through cognitive offloading - the leveraging of automatic processes and the minimizing of constraining processes on both working memory and reasoning to reduce effective cognitive load. To this end, a series of worksheets with consistent visual, graphical, and thematic presentation have been designed to enhance assimilation of statistical concepts by reducing the cognitive burden on recall, reasoning, and computation by: • Focusing the students on the concepts by providing them with the needed formulas and by taking them through the process needed to evaluate the hypothesis using a step-by-step approach; • Increasing automaticity through consistency of presentation across all of the statistical tests the students must master; • Utilizing top-down processing to facilitate conceptual understanding by incorporating meaningful icons; • Reducing cumbersome wording by drawing on common schemas; and • Mediating anxiety and its impediment on learning. The increased confidence and enthusiasm fostered through proper utilization of the worksheets helps integrate the statistical paradigm into the fabric of one's reasoning. This project has resulted in the development of a supplementary manual that is currently in use in Psy 3000, section 001, this semester. While not yet empirically tested, the worksheets appear to result anecdotally in greater comprehension and retention as per participant-reported experience. When completed, course feedback and voluntary survey responses will further inform the project and its potential applications. As the mysteries of cognitive function continue to be unveiled it is incumbent upon educators to incorporate that knowledge into their pedagogy. COGNITIVE OFFLOADING: MOVING FROM QUANTITATIVE QUAGMIRE TO CONCEPTUAL MASTERY IN STATISTICS Orrin T. Colby III (Monica M. Tsethlikai) Department of Psychology University of Utah undergraduate student experts on teaching Orrin T. Colby III Monica M. Tsethlikai |