Abstract
The Millennial Generation has been phasing out of undergraduate classrooms since 2013 and is being replaced by the technologically savvy and visual learners of Generation Z. To help to increase our understanding of the learning needs and attitudes of this new population of students, a two-fold data collection design has been implemented in undergraduate statistics classes at the University of Rhode Island. In the first round of data collection during the spring 2016 semester, survey and grade data was collected from an introductory biostatistics class pertaining to 146 students. Results from the analysis including the use of longitudinal generalized linear mixed models, hierarchical linear models and regression trees indicated a relationship between time and student performance throughout the semester, as well as a relationship between students starting attitudes and their performance and a potential group structure in the class based on their attitudes. This first round of data collection and analysis lead to interesting results about students starting attitudes and the effect on their performance. To further explore these results and extend them to more than one course, a second round of data collection was completed during the spring 2017 semester. Principal component analysis in connection with regression analysis indicated a relationship between students starting attitudes and their course performance. Cluster analysis indicated a two group structure in starting attitudes of the students in each course, with each cluster showing different achievement and learning preferences.
Highlights
1.1.1 MotivationThe Millennial Generation is phasing out of undergraduate courses and the generation is replacing them
MANUSCRIPT 1 Increasing Feedback from Generation Z This manuscript has been submitted to the Journal of Statistics Education and is currently under review
To help to increase our understanding of the learning needs and attitudes of this new population of students, we collected survey and grade data in an introductory biostatistics course pertaining to 146 students at the University of Rhode Island
Summary
1.1.1 MotivationThe Millennial Generation (all persons born from the early 1980s to the mid1990s) is phasing out of undergraduate courses and the generation is replacing them. When any question can be answered with a quick Google search or trip to Wikipedia, the idea of listening to lectures and reading from textbooks is unappealing, but very dissimilar to the normal way of learning for these students This generation can get any answer they want in seconds, but their ability to validate and further interpret these answers may be absent (Shatto and Erwin, 2016). The individual nature of the Internet allows Generation Z students to take entire classes without interacting with peers or instructors, find resources for research papers without traveling to the library and complete many instructional activities without the aid of others (Seemiller and Grace, 2017) This leads to an interesting preference to work independently and utilize those around them as a resource, rather than a requirement
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