DEVELOPMENT OF AN E-EXERCISES APPLICATION FOR AN INTRODUCTORY STATISTICS COURSE AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL

This study describes the development and content of an e-exercises application for an introductory statistics course targeted at bachelor students of a business school.The course is offered in blended-learning format.The development was based on success factors in blended learning and it involved the customization of an already existing software to specific educational needs.The primary goal was to enhance learning by offering a web-based and easy-to-use exercises environment that gives students an opportunity to work at their own pace and to receive instant feedback.The purpose was also to lighten the workload of an instructor with large number of students on the course and to provide learning analytics data for teaching development and research purposes.The course instructor designed and coded the application using a learning environment with already existing features of course setup and maintenance (ViLLE).Exercises included probability theory and statistical inference.The application allowed for personalization of assignments and the system was set to be simulation-based with random starting values for each student.Statistical inference exercises included phases of verbal multiple-choice questions.This enabled interpretation of numeric results of hypothesis testing and confidence interval estimation, which simulated real-world statistical decision-making.A survey (n = 98) showed that the students were satisfied with the application.The large majority of respondents (more than 80%) considered the application to be simple, easy to navigate with and overall, a successful system.A majority of students saw the system as a good way to promote independent working.The system is currently in use in Turku School of Economics, Finland and approximately 400 students use it every year.