Use of Dynamic Technology Tools in Statistics Education

Abstract

This paper examines the role of technology tools in statistics education over the past decades as well as provides recommendations for incorporating such tools into instruction. At this time, much software has been developed for the learning of statistics. However, students remain struggling to understand major statistical ideas such as center, shape, variation, sample size, sample, sampling distribution, and inference. Technology tools have numerous advantages over static demonstrations from textbooks or worksheets to assist with learning these major ideas. Incorporating evidence from literature, this thesis demonstrates that technology tools serve as a crucial element for both students and teachers in teaching and learning statistical concepts. It argues that the use of dragging and measuring in dynamic statistical environments aid students in exploratory data analysis which increases their use of statistical reasoning. The same holds true for students when using dynamic statistical applets to view the processes of resampling from sample data to aid with statistical inference.