Part of our final exam last year was to critique a certain research journal article that we desire. Writing it was hard for me given that we're bombarded with piled up activities that my mind can't take all at once. Thankfully, through God's grace, I was able to survive and somehow achieved a good grade.

Even before the pandemic hit, there was undeniably online education where each student is free to choose over the traditional scene. Thus, the article I chose discussed online teaching strategies in statistics and investigated which among is the most efficient one entitled, "Instructional strategies and course design for teaching statistics online: perspectives from online students".

Image Source

Statistics is one of the complex and difficult course because of its unique concepts in interpreting data and proposing solutions to problems in the company or in the field medicine. We can conclude that there are significant differences between traditional classroom settings and online learning experiences, especially in this course where there should be more hands-on exercises and live demonstrations to help students understand the material. The online statistics course referred to is an introductory course, quantitative research covering common statistical concepts and focuses on the application of educational research concepts for graduate students in educational technology. Because of this, the participants selected were K-20 (from kinder to college) teachers, while enrolled in the online course.

Their background and knowledge of teaching strategies allowed them to provide unique views and feedback related to effective teaching strategies and course design features that contributed to their studies. Through their reflection prompts published on 2013, 2014, and 2016, Dazhi Yang, the author, collected the data he needed. One of the questions he based in the reflections is about the most effective teaching strategies such as videos, teachers' notes, group discussions, case studies, and mini-projects that helped them learn. He presented every detail gathered neatly and efficiently which helped me to better understand what he wanted to convey.

Further, the strategies were also explained one by one including the role to be played in an online learning. The students' personal strategies such as asking for help from friends, and rehearsing calculations have also been shown. He also used figures that are crucial in a study to convey large amounts of complex information that will be also complicated to explain in the text. As a result of this research, the important ones are presented in an organized manner details using three categories. The result is discussed through an effective strategy in teaching adopted according to students, strategies not adopted but students use on their own, and effectively online ones course design.

In the first category, all of them turned out to be effective strategies, but, case study is the most effective while group discussion is the last. Secondly, is the use of outside online resources. Third, the course is well designed including its consistent structure, variety of sources, activities, and focus of course application.

Overall, Dazhi Yang's research was well done because he met the objective of this research. The title he used is direct, clear and concise while the references are in correct order. However, the font used is not open to all readers and the size of each letter. There's still a need to zoom them in order for us to read the informations. Well, it is clear that this study is important not only in previous years of development in the online scene but also in this current situation which we didn't expect before in the first place.

Due to the pandemic, every student including me, a statistics student, has been obliged to go online classes. This research is a great help in determining where we are most comfortable with in learning and in making improvements to both our behavior and our statistical beliefs. In my current academic situation, Dazhi Yang's article likely became my voice.

What's your thoughts about it? Just drop them in the comment section below.

Thanks. Owe you big time!♡

Lead Image: Source