Development and assessment of a preliminary randomization-based introductory statistics curriculum

The algebra-based introductory statistics course is the most popular undergraduate course in statistics and has a generally accepted “consensus” curriculum. While the content of the curriculum has been generally agreed upon, the recent GAISE guidelines have challenged the pedagogy of this course. Additionally, some arguments have been made that the curriculum should focus on a randomization approach to statistical inference instead of using asymptotic tests. We took these ideas and, in summer 2009, developed a preliminary version of a randomization based curriculum which we then implemented with 240 students in eight sections of introductory statistics in fall 2009. The CAOS assessment test was administered to these students and showed that students learned significantly more about statistical inference using the new curriculum, with comparable learning on most other questions. The development and implementation of such a curriculum, and the ensuing assessment results demonstrate that refining content, improving pedagogy and rethinking the consensus curriculum can significantly improve student learning. Further curricular development will continue to refine both content and pedagogy to continue to improve student learning gains on CAOS items and other assessment measures.