Implementing the Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning and Teaching in a Statistics Class for the Engineering Students

Abstract

Teaching statistics for non-statistics students is a quite daunting job. The students need to understand the concepts and capable to apply them to solve the pseudo and real problems. Traditional teaching method is mostly one direction, from the lecturer to the students. Therefore, it is solely a lecturer responsibility to make the students enjoying and understanding statistics. The implementation of the new teaching method by incorporating another lecturer, student and statistical software R in the learning process give very positive results. Beside, the students learn on how to build a solid team to finish and defence their projects, at the end of the project it is clear that the students’ levels of understanding about statistics are better than the previous year one which was without the project. The students’ scores based on the final project report, the homework and the written exam are increased. In continuing the teaching method, we learn that it is suitable more for the small class only (10-20 students). For the bigger class then we suggest to work with some teaching assistants to help during the computer sessions.