Summative assessment strategies for statistical learning: development, administration, and scoring of authentic and performance assessments

Abstract

This paper describes three original assessments developed for use in undergraduate- and graduate-level mathematics and statistics courses: (a) the context-dependent item set (undergraduate); (b) the visual data display project (undergraduate); and (c) the statistics notebook (graduate). The goal of each assessment was to measure student learning of statistical concepts and methodology, gauge the student’s ability to apply those concepts in context, and provide an opportunity for students to appreciate statistics as a way to investigate, summarize, and explain phenomena of interest. Examples of all three assessments and rubrics are available for presentation.