“Of Course I'm Communicating; I Lecture Every Day”: enhancing teaching and learning in introductory statistics

Abstract

This article focuses on one instructor's evolution from formal lecturing to interactive teaching and learning in a statistics course. Student perception data are used to demonstrate the instructor's use of communication to align the content, students, and instructor throughout the course. Results indicate that the students learned, that communication in the alignment process played a role in the learning, and that the instructor used four key categories of communication: encouraging open communication, demonstrating examples interactively, structuring opportunities for application through problem-solving, and engaging students in reflection about their learning. The article concludes with the instructor's reflections on how communication and the approach to teaching and learning changed as a result of conducting the scholarship of teaching and learning in the course.