Passion-Driven Statistics: A Transformative Undergraduate Experience in Statistics Using Real-World, Project-Based Learning

How can we infuse passion into our students' experience of introductory courses? How do we show our students that the material matters, not just in the realm of their field but in their own lives? As psychologists and researchers, we understand the critical need for our students to understand statistics. However, we acknowledge that for many of our students, it is unclear to them why they need to know statistics. Many of them come with math phobia or apprehension. Additionally, in our data-driven world, experience with programming is becoming a skill that many employers are looking for. Our presentation will introduce Passion-Driven Statistics, a project-based, introductory statistics curriculum that supports students in conducting original research with real world data. Funded by the National Science Foundation, our curriculum engages introductory statistics students in data-driven research with real world datasets using project-based learning. Previous examination of data collected from students who have taken this curriculum show that this course attracts higher rates of under-represented minority (URM) students compared to a traditional math statistics course (Dierker et al., 2015) and higher rates of female and URM students compared to an introductory programming course (Cooper & Dierker, 2017). URM students were found to be twice as likely to report that their interest in conducting research increased (Dierker et al., 2016). Students reported the course as more rewarding, were more likely to accomplish more than expected, found the course more useful than other courses, increased confidence in working with data, increased interest in pursuing advanced statistics courses, and received more individualized support than other courses (Dierker et al., 2018a). We hope to encourage educators that project-based learning is a one way to introduce students to the real-world applications of their course material and instill a sense of confidence in their abilities.