By Desiree McQueen
The Statistics Department is conducting research to help make courses easier for students. Researchers are studying different learning styles and teaching methods to make knowledge more accessible to all students.
Suzanne Hendrix, a BYU statistics teacher, said approximately 70 percent of all BYU students must take statistics.
“We must accommodate about 1,600 students with different learning styles every semester,” Hendrix said.
Statistics is a course required by many majors and dreaded, students said.
“It is hard for some students to think in this new way,” Hendrix said.
“Statistics is like a foreign language,” said Ana Preto-Bay, 39, an instructional psychology student from Portugal. “The grammar needs to be made accessible to everyone in order to communicate knowledge and ideas effectively.”
Preto-Bay said chemistry between the teacher and learner precedes successful learning. Different approaches to sharing information reach individuals with different learning styles, Preto-Bay said.
The Statistics Department has placed high priority on making its classes accessible to the many students who must take them.
“Instructors do a lot, but adding new methods to their way of teaching may reach more students,” Hendrix said. “Two students in the same class may walk away with two completely different experiences.”
Hendrix is using previous research data to look at how students score on individual test questions. She is looking for patterns pointing to certain learning styles, types of questions and gender as altering variables.
Ultimately, the goal will be to reach all students by adding different ways and methods to teach concepts, Hendrix said.
Hendrix will be lecturing on her research Thurs., Jan. 31, at noon in 2245 Smith Family Living Center.
