StatCenter includes a program for delivering homework problems,
for giving feedback to students as they work the homework, and for grading a
completed homework and sending the grade to the teacher.
Students. Your teacher may assign all or some of your class work through StatCenter. These assignments may be announced in class, posted on electronic message boards, included in class syllabi, or communicated to you in some other manner.
Go to the Homework area and find your class. Homework is
categorized first by discipline (Economics, Sociology), then by institution
(SUU, UofU), then by professor, and finally by class. Select the assignment
you want, and do the work. In most cases you will receive feedback at each step,
and will be able to re-work problems until you are satisfied with your answers.
When the homework is complete, submit it to your class.
Teachers. Once you have created a homework, it will be graded by the computer and the grades of students who complete and submit it forwarded to your StatCenter grade file.
Creating Homework.
You may use homework problems created by other teachers and posted on StatCenter
or create your own. To set up a homework go to Create Homework. Enter
your name, class title, and homework topic. You may browse other teachers problems
on the same topic, cutting and pasting problems into your own homework. (At
the end of all homework problems a teacher's name and class are included to
give credit to the problem's author.) To create your own homework problems follow
the instructions on the Create Homework page.
Teachers often present extra information
to supplement their classes via overhead projectors, photographic slides, or
computers. Teachers can make these materials available in the Class Materials
section of StatCenter. These materials are not meant as tutorials or as "stand-alone"
presentations. They were developed to support a class presentation and typically
require knowledge of that presentation to make sense. But for students who regularly
attend a teacher's presentations, but want to check or review their notes or
who missed a class, these materials can be invaluable.
StatCenter is a set of online resources for teaching and learning introductory statistics. It is not a stand-alone class designed to teach statistics without the support of a class and a teacher. Consequently most of StatCenter's functions interact with class activities and do not include step by step teaching. But StatCenter does offer tutorials that do teach the main points of some important statistical concepts. Other tutorials teach how to use some aspects of StatCenter.
In Tutorials you can expect a reasonable
attempt to provide all the resources and steps necessary to learn a particular
topic. For a list of these topics go to the Tutorial Menu.
StatCenter provides online research projects
in which students can participate. While these projects will vary substantially
across disciplines, the common element is that the research projects provide
a place where students can experience how data is actually collected on some
important phenomenon in their discipline. Usually the data collected in these
virtual research projects will be put in a file assigned to a particular class
where it will be available for analysis with the statistical tools students
are learning.
Students can create simple projects for collecting data. For example, StatCenter provides a short form for creating a simple survey questionnaire. A student can create a survey and other students can volunteer to answer the survey. In that way, students can build small data collection projects.
General Message Boards.
StatCenter provides message boards, some with threaded themes, open to all users.
Class Message Boards. Specific classes may have their own threaded message boards accessible only by students and teachers working with that class. Threaded themes makes it possible for a student with a specific question about one topic to follow all questions and answers on the message board regarding that topic.
Chat Areas are meant to facilitate communication among all users of StatCenter, students and teachers alike. This communication may range from normal social exchanges of friends to a live review session conducted online by a teacher and a group of students.
Etiquette. Please use common sense when "speaking" online. Online chat is public and should respect common rules of politeness and decency. Although not monitored, all chat dialogue is routinely saved to electronic files for a period of time before it is purged. Complaints can be checked against these files.
StatCenter has two kinds of chat areas. All
parts of the Virtual Campus are chat areas. People can speak with anyone
who is in the same place in the Virtual Campus as they are. StatCenter also
has other Dedicated Chatting Areas outside the Virtual Campus.
StatCenter includes interactive structures
designed to promote thinking in terms of specific relationships which are useful
in statistics. These structures take the form of interesting challenges, puzzles,
and games. They are accompanied by optional tutorials for those who want didactic
explanations.
Many sites on the web are resources
for learning statistics. Hyperlinks to many statistically-relevant sites
are provided in the Web Resource area.