Reports from ICOTS 8
As
you may recall the Statistics Education SIGMAA gave some small travel grants to
help some of those going to ICOTS 8 (8th International Conference on
Teaching Statistics). We asked them to
report back to us on the experience. We have
reports from Larry Lesser, Ann Bingham, Jennifer Noll and Michelle Sisto.
Report from the
International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS8)
by Larry
Lesser, The University of Texas at El Paso
The International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS) is a weeklong conference sponsored every four years (in particular, in the summer of each Winter Olympics year, or equivalently, in each World Cup year) by the International Statistical Institute (ISI) and its education section, the International Association for Statistical Education (IASE). Each ICOTS moves to a different continent and the seven previous ICOTS meetings were held in England, Canada, New Zealand, Morocco, Singapore, South Africa, and Brazil. In July 2010, ICOTS8 was held in Ljubljana, the capital of EU-newcomer Slovenia, and featured an excellent website: http://icots8.org.
The theme was "Data and Context in Statistics Education: Towards an Evidence-Based Society" and the 550 attendees (from over 50 countries!) spanned a broad variety of professional backgrounds. Participants from the US included NCTM president Michael Shaughnessy, ASA Secretary (and former Executive Director) Ron Wasserstein, and ASA education director Martha Aliaga. I gave an invited talk on how to address (and leverage) the increasing diversity of the classrooms we face and also gave an invited talk on behalf of non-attendee Dennis Pearl about www.causeweb.org, a huge resource website that utilizes the taxonomy of the MAA's Mathematical Sciences Digital Library.
The ICOTS Proceedings include about 350 papers and can be found (without fee or registration/login) on the left-hand sidebar at http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/publications.php. Opening plenary speaker Hans Rosling arguably made the most striking impression of the week and you can see why by exploring his website www.gapminder.org and a video excerpt from a similar talk at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html.
Another noteworthy plenary was by author Gerd Gigerenzer, who made a compelling case for communication risk (e.g., medical risk) with natural frequencies, mortality rates, and absolute risk instead of with conditional probabilities, five-year survival rates, and relative risk, respectively.
It was also valuable to hear how speakers from many countries addressed some of our common difficulties (e.g., teaching students with varying levels of preparation). And having just published a paper (in Nov. 2009 Statistics Education Research Journal) on English language learners in statistics, it was very interesting and helpful for me to discover (and talk with) others doing related work in places ranging from the United States to Oman!
A nice feature of the conference schedule is having most of the mealtimes open for people to network with colleagues or special interest groups (e.g., on statistical literacy) and setting aside Wednesday afternoon for touring, of which the highlight was the Postojna Cave (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWWOQCzS7TM&feature=channel).
Financing international travel these days is challenging
and I knew I would not be able to make the trip without assistance. I am very grateful for the help of the MAA StatEd section and am happy to report that it should be
much easier for me and other section members to attend ICOTS9. The main reason, as announced at the closing
banquet, is that the location will be...for the first time ever...in the
US! Specifically, it will be July 13-18,
2014 in Flagstaff, AZ. As an MAA member,
this was additionally exciting since the conference is actually in my
(Southwestern) section. It will also offer
a chance to see the Natural Wonder of the World that's in our country: the Grand Canyon. Hopefully, our SIGMAA will be well
represented in terms of attending and giving papers.
For further perspectives on the advantages of attending ICOTS and insights gained from learning about the state of statistics education in around the world, there will be a 2011 Joint Mathematics Meetings panel sponsored jointly by the SIGMAA Stat-Ed and the MAA-ASA Joint Committee on Undergraduate Statistics. Scheduled panelists currently include Katherine Halvorsen, John McKenzie, Milo Schield, Gail Burrill, and Rob Carver. Speaking of Rob, he took the following photo below that shows me (and fellow ICOTS attendee Jennifer Kaplan of Michigan State) next to a delightful Slovenian family who hosted us for dinner one evening. Like most Slovenians, they spoke English graciously and well, in part from the popularity of American TV shows that have Slovene subtitles but not dubbed audio.
Another picture is at http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/lesser/sloveniacastle.jpg.
What I learned at ICOTS-8 by
Ann Bingham
On
the last day of the conference in Ljubljana, I found myself in a taxi speeding
towards the Cankarjev dom. The hotel was not particularly far from the
conference, but I had had a late night and needed the taxi to arrive in time
for Noelle Zendrera’s session. Noelle teaches at the Catholic University of l’Ouest, France and we had spoken previously.
I was very glad I had hurried to the conference.
In her session she discussed student understanding, or lack of understanding,
of introductory statistics. Her experience mirrored my own. Ninety students
took a written assessment on a specific single mean test problem. Only 25.6%
of the 90 students produced a solution corresponding to what was expected. Most
of students, 66.7%, produced a solution not corresponding to what was expected
(“erroneous”, mistaken solutions). A
small minority of students, 7.8%, were unable to give a solution
I have had
classes with similar results. But then she also discussed the results of
clinical task interviews with ten students. The sad revelation here was that
four of the ten students had misconceptions (“wrong” conceptions) towards
the concepts of sample and sample mean. But the most shocking result was that five
of the ten students interviewed were completely unable to conceptualize the
idea of sample and sample mean.
Although
these students were all human services students, they represent many
introductory statistics students. I
found it amazing that I was meeting with educators all over the world, and so
many of us had such similar stories to tell. Although it was comforting to
exchange our battle stories, the best part of the conference was hearing ways
to deal with these difficulties.
After her
talk Dr. Zendera explained how she has changed her
syllabus to allow more time at the beginning of the term to ensure student
truly learn the concepts of sample and sample mean. There were many other
sessions with ideas for improving student outcomes in Statistics classes. I
watched examples of applets to do inquiry based learning about samples and
sample size from John Holbrook and his colleagues. Caterina Primi University
of Florence, Italy, discussed both cognitive and non-cognitive variables that
affect student learning. Her research
suggested that some review of basic mathematical techniques at the beginning of
the term would help students. Another suggestion was to encourage the students’
attitude towards the course, to help them understand that they are capable of
learning this material. There were topics related to higher level
statistics courses also.
But then there were other activities. I was in
the taxi because we had slept a bit late that morning. The
night before we had enjoyed ourselves immensely at the conference banquet.
We had a wonderful many-course meal in a ballroom at the historic Grand Union
Hotel.
On Wednesday of that week we had an afternoon
free for sightseeing, so I took a small tourist train up to the Ljubljana
Castle that overlooks the city. Amazing
views and medieval buildings made for a marvelous touristy day.
Each evening we strolled, with what seemed like
the entire population of Slovenia, along the Ljubljana River and stopped for
gelato or a drink.
I came home from ICOTS ready to consider my
syllabi for Statistics classes and to make use of much that I learned. It was
worth the time and effort to go, and I’d be the first to recommend it to any
instructor of Statistics.
Ann giving
her talk. Solvenia street
Ljubljana
castle on the hill Tourist train
ICOTS
Reflection
By Jennifer
Noll
There are two points I wish to highlight in my
reflection of the ICOTS 8 conference. The first point of my reflection is to
discuss my own personal experience attending the conference as a young
statistics education researcher and presenter. The second point is how the
theme of the conference impacted my thinking about statistics education
particularly in relation to technology.
As a young statistics educator, I found the ICOTS
conference to be intellectually stimulating. Senior statistics education researchers
were accessible and I had the opportunity to meet with many experienced
researchers whose work I have read over the past several years. I found the
informal lunches and chats between sessions with these senior statistics
educators to be a valuable contribution toward my professional development as a
statistics educator. Further, the senior statistics educators who presented in
the same session as I did, or who were present in the audience were supportive
and provided insightful feedback about my presentation. For instance, I
received feedback on the task design in my study and a lively conversation
developed around the task I reported on, which resulted in new ideas for
refining the task for future research. I believe the feedback from and
interaction with senior statistics educators is a primary reason why
conferences like ICOTS are so valuable to young researchers.
The theme of ICOTS 8 was “Data and context in
statistics education: towards an evidence-based society”. My experience
attending ICOTS speaks to the importance of this theme. Plenary speakers Hans Rosling, Jessica Utts, Gerd Gigerenzer and Cliff Konold spoke of the significance of statistical reasoning
and the ability to construct evidence based claims from a data set. Yet, these
plenary speakers noted the complexity involved in developing strong statistical
reasoning skills even among well-educated adults.
A common question that researchers appeared to focus
on was how to make statistical ideas more accessible to students. The use of technology, such as Tinkerplots (Cliff Konold) or Gapminder (Hans Rosling) or
animation with Excel (Chris Wild), was one potential solution to the question
of how to make statistical ideas more accessible. I found the use of different
technology a particularly compelling area of the research presented at ICOTS. I
was impressed by the ingenuity in the visual representations these technologies
provided. I observed these researchers
using technology in three primary ways: (1) to motivate student interest, (2)
to animate important features of statistical processes, and (3) to begin
instruction with operations which are intuitive and natural to the student and
allows them to build to more sophisticated methods. Next steps for the
statistics education research community would be to try out these technologies
in the classroom and begin to gather preliminary data that investigates how
successful these technologies are at achieving their intended goals and how
they can be refined to further support students’ statistical thinking.
Report
on ICOTS 8 by Michelle Sisto 
I had the great pleasure of joining the close to 400 statistics educators and practitioners from 47 countries gathered in Ljubljana, Sovenia this past July 11-16th for the 8th International Conference on Teaching Statistics. We spent the week sharing research findings and teaching experiences, learning about innovative uses of technology in teaching, and debating and discussing how best to teach statistics to students across the world from school age through university years.
Many sessions addressed the conference theme, “Data and context in statistics education: Towards an evidence-based society.” In the opening plenary session, Hans Rosling dazzled the audience with animated graphs showing dynamically how the world’s countries have evolved over the last fifty years, rendering simple dichotomous classifications of “developed” and “developing” countries impossible in light of the evidence. To get a taste of these graphs yourselves, try www.gapminder.org. Other sessions focused on incorporating national census data in the classroom, selecting rich data sets that promote inquiry from students, using evidence in management and in business, and developing evidence in statistics education research.
A session dedicated to collaboration amongst researchers focused on various advantages of working collaboratively, such as combining skill sets, creating a safe and supportive atmosphere for dialog and exchange of ideas, and developing an institutional memory of the process. Technologies such as Skype and Google Docs are making these collaborations easier and cheaper across countries and continents.
Several sessions focused on assessment, especially on developing assessment items to evaluate conceptual understanding. A recurring theme in the assessment discussions was the key role of language – language used in the classroom, language in textbooks, assessment language, students learning in a foreign language, and the very precise meanings words can have in statistics as opposed to their common usage. Additionally, the need for incentives for good assessment practices was raised – many participants recognized that richer assessments are more time consuming and not often explicitly valued by institutions.
ICOTS is
held every four years at different locations around the world and in July 2014,
Flagstaff, Arizona will host the ninth ICOTS. I hope that many
Center of Ljubljana
ICOTS Gala Dinner: Bob delMas, Chris Franklin, John Holcomb, Michelle Sisto