Statistics is not the subject most psychology students are feverishly looking forward to. Fears and doubts about its relevance are quite common. This is especially pronounced at our institution, a large distance-teaching university with highly heterogeneous students. We recognized three clusters of students that might need special support: (1) students with fear of statistics, (2) students whose school time was a long time ago, (3) students who already failed the statistics exam. We gave those students the opportunity to participate in small, supervised groups to discuss learning strategies, problems, or fears. Students who did not participate served as a control group. We exploratively evaluated which kind of students were interested, and if the groups affected attitudes towards statistics, general self-efficacy, and exam-related variables. Interest and activity in the groups were low. No unique effect of participation in the groups on attitudes and grades were observable. Students stated that the groups did not help them to deal with the course. If these results prove stable in further studies with an improved design, one might conclude that setting up such small groups is not worth the effort.

中文翻译：

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随心所欲——针对高度异质性学生的在线统计课程中的小组

统计学并不是大多数心理学学生热切期待的科目。对其相关性的恐惧和怀疑相当普遍。这在我们的机构尤其明显，这是一所拥有高度异质学生的大型远程教学大学。我们认识到可能需要特别支持的三类学生：(1) 害怕统计的学生，(2) 上学时间很久以前的学生，(3) 已经通过统计考试的学生。我们让这些学生有机会参加有监督的小型小组，讨论学习策略、问题或恐惧。未参加的学生作为对照组。我们探索性地评估了哪种学生感兴趣，以及这些群体是否会影响对统计数据、一般自我效能感和考试相关变量的态度。小组的兴趣和活动都很低。没有观察到参与小组对态度和成绩的独特影响。学生们表示，这些小组没有帮助他们处理课程。如果这些结果在经过改进设计的进一步研究中证明是稳定的，那么人们可能会得出结论，建立这样的小组不值得付出努力。