Fostering Conceptual Understanding in Mathematical Statistics

However, 10 years after the release of the Guidelines for the Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) College Report, 2005, and the subsequent movement to stress conceptual understanding and foster active learning in statistics classrooms, the sequence still remains a traditional, lecture-intensive course.

In this article, we discuss various instructional approaches, activities, and assessments that can be used to foster active learning and emphasize conceptual understanding while still covering the necessary theoretical content students need to be successful in subsequent statistics or actuarial science courses. In addition, we share student reflections on these course enhancements. The course revision we suggest doesn’t require substantial changes in content, so other mathematical statistics instructors can implement these strategies without sacrificing concepts in probability and inference that are fundamental to the needs of their students.