Introduction

Most introductory statistics instructors consider understanding of important concepts to be one of the course learning goals. Teaching students how to blindly apply statistical methods to obtain results that they do not understand is not usually what instructors are striving for, although that is sometimes the unintended result! It is now understood that the development of conceptual understanding is facilitated by student engagement in class and by meaningful class discussions. This paper describes how the thoughtful use of clicker technology can be employed to enhance student engagement and inform instruction in an introductory statistics course.

This paper is organized into sections that address the following: a brief description of the context in which clickers were used (the university and the course), the motivation for incorporating clickers into the introductory statistics course, how the use of clickers was implemented in the course, what was learned about writing effective clicker questions, and the results of an informal experiment to assess the effect of clicker use on student learning and engagement.

Description of California Polytechnic State University and of the Course

California Polytechnic State University, located in San Luis Obispo, California, is a public, primarily undergraduate, comprehensive universitywith approximately 19,000 students. As a polytechnic university, there are large programs in engineering, agriculture, architecture, mathematics and the sciences, but as a comprehensive university there are also strong programs in business, education and the liberal arts.