Abstract

SALCEDO, Audy. Statistics for non-specialists: A challenge in distance education. Rev. Ped [online]. 2008, vol.29, n.84, pp.145-172. ISSN 0798-9792.

The aim of this study is to describe how students on the Supervised University Studies program in the School of Education at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, make use of resources found on the Internet to teach and learn statistics. Information and communication technologies (ICT) can be of great help in the development of Higher Education Distance Learning, such as the Supervised Studies mentioned here, since such technologies make good use of, among other aspects, a bi-directional communicative model. In the case of the teaching of statistics, ICT appears to provide an important didactic support to help overcome certain difficulties in grasping fundamental statistical concepts. In the Internet, it is possible to find resources that can help change the way in which statistics is taught and to improve the understanding of basic ideas, above all in Distance Learning; hence our interest in learning how students on the Supervised Studies courses use these resources. To do this, a selected sample of such students was taken and each was given a questionnaire to find out how they used Internet resources designed for the teaching of statistics. The questionnaire included open and closed questions. The answers to the open questions were analyzed and classified into categories. The results indicate that although the students surveyed used the Internet to back up their studies, they did not use it frequently in Statistics courses in the Distance Education mode. Most students were unaware of the resources available in the Internet that could be used to learn Statistics. Thus, perhaps due to a lack of training in the use of this resource in Distance Learning, the Internet in this particular case remains in its infancy.

Keywords : Statistics teaching; learning statistics; Education and Internet; Higher Education Distance Learning.

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