This course is designed to help students acquire the necessary statistical skills needed to conduct and be critical consumers of scientific educational research. It is a course aimed at producing careful and accurate researchers as well as astute readers of professional manuscripts and articles from a wide variety of educational settings. The basic areas to be covered in this course will include measurement and descriptive statistics, frequency distributions, measure of central tendency, measures of dispersion, standard normal distributions, and standard scores. The more advanced topics will include correlation, regression, hypothesis testing, “t” tests, and analysis of variance (ANOVA)

This is a distance education/online course; most of the material and assessment is on line, but some aspects of the course will require a visit to the mailbox. As an online course, it is possible to take advantage of technology and create a learning environment that allows for variability among students while efficiently covering all the material. The lessons are set up to be completed on a weekly basis-one for each week of a winter/spring semester.

Note: The constructed response quizzes set up by subject area, like Counseling/Student Affairs, or Nursing, are intended to be Homework only. In order for you to see my feedback for each question, I must have you submit it for grading. This resulting "grade" is not downloaded anywhere else. It will NOT count toward your final grade. Only the lesson quizzes, which are multiple choice, count toward your final grade. You may take the lesson quizzes twice, the highest score will be recorded.

The  primary advantage of the course is that you may proceed at your own pace in your chosen location up to the midterm and the final. Midterm and final assessments must done on a print out of the emailed exams since it is extremely cumbersome to "show all of your math work" in a word processing program. When a student has completed the required lessons to take the midterm or final exams, they will be given an email by the instructor with the files attached.

Secondly, this course contains multiple options for the same material presented in ways relevant to the area of study of most of the students. Each lesson contains four different versions of homework: Counseling and Student Affairs; Education Leadership; and Special Education. Each version uses separate samples of homework relevant to that area of study throughout the course. Any student may may do the assignments from any area. It is recommended to try more than one area prior to taking the lesson final quiz.

Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, 6th Ed., Gravetter, Frederick & Wallnau, Larry; Thomson/Wadsworth Publishers, Belmont CA.    ISBN:0-534-60246-0 

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF THE MSUM TEACHER EDUCATION UNIT

MSUM candidates are professionals who are knowledgeable, reflective, humanistic, and creative.

Knowledgeable: MSUM candidates display competence in their subject matter, built upon a strong grounding in liberal studies. MSUM candidates understand the principles of learning, assessment and technology. They understand and apply legal and ethical considerations to all aspects of their work. MSUM candidates are able to integrate theory and practice, and view learning as an active process. MSUM candidates demonstrate the ability to model connections between philosophical foundations and best practices in the field. As life-long learners, MSUM candidates engage in research and complex thinking. They design opportunities for others to seek knowledge and to understand themselves as members of the world community.

Reflective: MSUM candidates engage in thoughtful analysis of the meaning and significance of their actions, decisions, and results with regard to their work in order to assess progress in meeting this guiding principle. It is through this reflective process that candidates improve instruction, implement new ideas, abandon ineffective methodologies, and enhance learning outcomes for their students. MSUM candidates are skilled at analyzing their teaching from a variety of perspectives and identifying connections between teaching strategies and student learning. In addition, candidates utilize a variety of techniques to question their procedures and consider alternatives for instruction and student growth. MSUM candidates recognize learning, motivational, and developmental variables and relate those dimensions to their teaching practices. Finally, MSUM candidates bring a questioning spirit to received wisdom and conventional practice when needed.

Humanistic: MSUM candidates value the personal worth of each individual. This is based on a belief in people's potential and innate ability to develop to their fullest. MSUM candidates' actions are grounded in knowledge of different cultural and ethnic groups within the world community, and in knowledge of the influence of culture and history, ethnicity, language, gender and socio-economics on one's life. This knowledge base informs candidates' decision-making as they create environments that promote freedom, compassion, and success for all learners. MSUM candidates are fair-minded in their interactions with others, as well as sensitive to and accepting of individual differences. Further, MSUM candidates have an understanding of aesthetics and the diversity that is part of the human experience and will incorporate this knowledge into their work. MSUM candidates recognize and accommodate a variety of linguistic and nonlinguistic interpersonal skills in their actions with others. MSUM candidates foster resiliency in the students with whom they work and model these qualities in their own work.

Creative: MSUM candidates understand the powerful resources of the arts and sciences and use their knowledge of these areas to bring the best of their imaginative and creative acts into the classroom. MSUM candidates recognize the important role creativity plays in the design of instruction and classroom environment. They will, for themselves and for their students, meet new situations with resourcefulness, excitement and curiosity, with an investigative attitude, and with the ability to pose, seek and design solutions to problems. MSUM candidates are cognizant of the aesthetic elements of the world and draw on that knowledge to make curricular decisions designed to help students not only learn about aesthetics, but to also learn how to think about the world at large.

Graduate Expectations:

It is expected that this course will challenge the participant to expand their present and past experiences in the field of education to include a scientific approach to their field. This course should build on and be integrated into the program courses and field research of each participant’s advanced degree program. A scientific approach to research is fairly rigid with specific procedures designed to investigate professional questions that grow from practitioner observations. It is this inquisitiveness that will be maximized in this course. Prior knowledge of statistics is not necessary. An open mind is necessary.

Course Objectives:
The curriculum and methods of instruction are carefully selected to facilitate the acquisition of the following learning objectives:

• Understand the basic statistical tools that are commonly used in educational research.
• Know the appropriate methods for analyzing statistical data.
• Recognize situations in which parametric or nonparametric tests should be applied.
• Know how to conduct some specific parametric and nonparametric tests.
• Be able to employ statistics in order to answer specific research questions.

Special Accommodations:
Special accommodations can be made for students who have disabilities that represent a barrier to full participation in this course. If you think you may have a disability, please contact the instructor at your convenience for consultation. Keep in mind, however, that this is an on line course, and accomodations may be limited. This course is also offered in a regular classroom setting.

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