Educational Leadership Doctoral Students’ Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Instructional Strategies and Course Design in a Fully Online Graduate Statistics Course
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v23i4.1568Keywords:
instructional strategy, online course design, statisticsAbstract
In the past several decades, higher education has witnessed exponential growth of online learning, as well as the need for it. New technology has dramatically transformed the way education is delivered compared to what takes place in the traditional classroom. It has enabled online delivery of course materials to students outside of face-to-face classroom in an asynchronous manner and provide students with self-paced flexibility at their convenience. Given the abstract nature of statistics content, effectiveness of the instructional strategies and course design in online statistics instruction has become particularly important to students’ learning success. In this qualitative study, the authors explored perceptions of the Educational Leadership doctoral students towards an online graduate level introductory statistic course in terms of whether the online course instructional strategies and course design helped them learn statistics. The authors assessed effectiveness of the instructional strategies and design of the online statistics course as well as students’ needs, so more effective instructional strategies could be used for online statistics teaching. Students identified the PowerPoint presentations with recorded lectures to be the most useful strategy. This strategy, along with live Q&A sessions, guided practice and activities, helped make the textbook information more real-world and connected the elements of statistics to application.
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