Abstract

Historically, the introductory course in statistics at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), has taken a traditional, lecture-based form. A previous study at the NMBU concluded that the course structure appeared to disfavor certain cognitive or personality types, extraverts in particular. Therefore, in 2016, as an experiment, the course was restructured into a student active learning course following a flipped classroom approach. At the same time, students were encouraged to do an online screening test for cognitive preferences, personality, work interest, and preferred learning style. The main outcome in the present study was exam scores. Despite the new course structure, we still found significant differences in exam scores between students with a contextual preference, compared with a digital preference, and those with a feeling-based rather than a thinking-based personality characteristic. However, in contrast to the previous study, no significant difference in exam scores was found between the extraverts and the introverts, also after adjusting for other covariates. In the present article, we outline these results and other findings that indicate that additional adaptations should be made in the course, in order to reach an even wider group of the heterogeneous student mass, helping individuals to better reach their learning potential.

摘要

从历史上看，挪威生命科学大学 (NMBU) 的统计学入门课程采用了传统的讲座形式。NMBU 之前的一项研究得出结论，课程结构似乎不利于某些认知或性格类型，尤其是外向者。因此，2016年，作为实验，该课程按照翻转课堂的方式重组为学生主动学习课程。同时，鼓励学生对认知偏好、个性、工作兴趣和偏好的学习方式进行在线筛选测试。本研究的主要结果是考试成绩。尽管采用了新的课程结构，但我们仍然发现具有上下文偏好的学生与数字偏好的学生之间的考试成绩存在显着差异，以及那些具有基于感觉而不是基于思考的人格特征的人。然而，与之前的研究相比，在调整其他协变量后，外向者和内向者的考试成绩没有显着差异。在本文中，我们概述了这些结果和其他发现，表明应该在课程中进行额外的调整，以覆盖更广泛的异质学生群体，帮助个人更好地发挥他们的学习潜力。