Student Perceptions of Engagement in an Introductory Statistics Course

Abstract

This article presents the results of a case study from one professor’s experience teaching an introductory statistics course. The goal of this study was to better understand student perceptions of engagement in a statistics course. Voluntary, self-reported data were collected daily for students to evaluate the engagement level of the class that day, and students also identified activities that they considered engaging. A final survey was administered at the end of the semester to provide a holistic, retrospective measure of engagement in the course and to collect feedback on various questions related to perceptions of engagement. Results indicate variation in student engagement scores and variation in engagement scores across the semester indicating some influence of class activity on perceptions of engagement. Perceptions of engagement are contextualized with students’ comments from the daily surveys. Associations between engagement and final course grade were also investigated. Student perceptions of engagement were also compared to the professor’s perception of engagement for students.