Talk:Statistics Rocks: Day 1

-- Kaitlyn King 07:06, 30 April 2011 (EDT)

Hi Stephanie,

Great start on your mini course. I absolutely love the topic you chose to focus on during this mini course. With the growing epidemic of obesity in this country, integrating a math lesson with a social problem was a great idea! Just by using this topic, you have gained the attention of the learner and related mathematics to life. In fact, I was so interested that I watched the whole video of Supersize Me after I read through and analyzed your unit.

Can you learn something from this unit? Yes a learner can certainly learn about the mean, median, and mode in this unit while also learning about the details of their final project.

Learning outcomes: The objectives, which were stated in the home page, were centered around big ideas and did a nice job explaining what students will be able to do after the end of the course. I would suggest placing the learning objectives that are specifically for the first unit on the opening page of that unit, so that the learners will have a better understanding of the things they will be able to do when that specific unit is complete.

Content-goal consistency: The content so far is, in my opinion, aligned nicely with the learning goals stated in the opening page.

Instructional sequencing: I see that you have a section labeled introduction to statistics in which precedes the mini lesson on mean, mean, mode, and range. This is a great way to sequence this unit, as it highlights the prerequisites before tackling the larger concepts.

Engagement and interaction: Great prompts, heading, and reflective questions. Having the students think about the outcome of the video, before watching the end of the video, allows a student to critically think about the topic and issue at hand. Also, the Supersize video is a great way to initially grab the attention of the learner, since once they are ‘hooked’ the more likely they are to remain engaged in the lesson and the whole course.

Technical quality: Very informative and easy to read lesson for day 1. If I had a suggestion for this category I would recommend putting a few pictures in along with some navigation tools to move between pages.

Extended resources: While navigating through your site I did not find any extended resources, but I am sure you will add them soon.

Great start, I look forward to seeing the end product!! :)

instructor comments on your draft units -- Jz833665 12:01, 30 April 2011 (EDT)

Your lessons on problem/project-based learning of basic statistics are very interesting. A few comments:

• As you should be aware of and have seen in Kaitlyn's mini-course on problematizing math, a key challenge in PBL is to evolve a problem situation in which core target concepts/skills are meaningfully applied. The task situation you designed looks promising in addressing this issue but can be more explicit in how the questions generated through analysis of fast food menus lead to the focus on the concepts of means, mode, and median. Why are these measures integrally important for the above questions? Without making this clear, I worry that the students will have fun talking about fast foods without going deep into math/statistics.
• You can also elaborate more on the teacher's role in this project and in each major discussion/analysis activity.