SUMS: A flexible approach to the teaching and learning of statistics

Abstract

Statistical Understanding Made Simple (SUMS) (http://www.gla.ac.uk/sums) is an online statistics tutorial generator which covers basic statistical concepts and focuses on applying these concepts to real data. Instructors can upload their own data to the site, and students choose the level at which they want to work from one of three levels. SUMS adopts a teaching approach where each concept is explained, the student explores the concept with an interactive game, and then applies their knowledge to a concrete example (using data provided by the instructor). SUMS was evaluated to determine its effectiveness as a stand-alone resource for psychology students and as a resource to support a psychology laboratory class, using a measure of statistics self-efficacy (based on Finney & Schraw, 2003) and a statistics comprehension test. Results of the evaluation showed that overall, SUMS had a positive impact on students' statistics comprehension and self-efficacy.