CONTEXT Please describe the type and the location of school in which you are working (small liberal arts college in eastern USA, large university in Brazil, etc.). The Universidad de Los Andes is located in Bogota a city of seven million inhabitants. Los Andes starts the new millennium as a center of recognized academic excellence in Colombia and Latin America. Since its foundation in 1948, the University has taken up a commitment to the formation of intellectual, technical and humanist elite, which has played an active role in the production of thought, science and progress in the country. Los Andes has also brought in major scientific and technological advances recently developed around the world, and it disseminated them; and today, it has taken up the leadership of a mission to face the challenges of the internationalization of our economy, and of technical, social and cultural changes now occurring around the world. The University is an autonomous and independent institution which fosters pluralism, diversity, dialogue, debate, criticism, tolerance and respect for ideas, beliefs and values of its members. Also, it seeks academic excellence, and offers its students a critical and ethical formation designed to strengthen their awareness of their social and civic responsibilities, and their commitment to the analysis of the problems of their country, and the quest for its solutions. For this purpose, Los Andes develops and implements innovative methods in teaching and research, designed to make students the main agent of their own formation, and to solve problems presented to them with creativity and responsibility. Further, as part of its encouragement of integrated formation, the University provides an interdisciplinary environment with all the flexibility required for the integration of the arts, the sciences, technology and the humanities. The University is convinced that its formation should be a privileged opportunity for the members of its community to grow, develop and form themselves around the professions and occupations which they will be engaged in for the rest of their lives. As a result of the intention to encourage an educational environment and based on an interdisciplinary approach and integrated formation, Los Andes has give pride of place to three basic objectives in the formation of its students: - Autonomy - Responsibility - Broadness of mind With the conviction that a broader education provides the basis to face our changing and globalize world, the University has since its foundation striven to provide students with an integral formation. Therefore, all students receive formation in areas other than that of their undergraduate program. Complementary formation is provided from a number of courses which are incorporated into study plans in order to broaden the opportunities open to students, and to encourage them to have additional educational experiences, such as work-study programs, and academic exchanges. There are many arguments which support and fuel our interest in providing integral formation. In particular, we should mention the need to help enrich processes of socialization of our students, based on a growing awareness of their own identity, in which historical, cultural, technical, humanistic, scientific, and social reflection allows them on the one hand to understand contemporary realities in general, and on the other, Colombian realities in particular, and thus to become people able to transform their own environment. One of the main characteristics of the University is the flexibility of the academic curriculums. This is reflected in the fact that its students can combine academic programs: The study plan of each of our programs allows students to select courses every semester, so that they can adopt a study plan to meet their particular needs and interests. To take advantage of the opportunities for formation that Los Andes offer to their students they should have to demonstrate their English reading competence at the end of the second year. How many students are enrolled to take Statistics? How many sections are there? If some students take the course online and others do not, please describe how selection is made. There are 44 students enrolled in the quantitative methots course. We have one session each semester. What is the composition of the class in terms of year, level, gender, ethnicity, etc? Six students of the master's program (5 females and 1 male) that should have to take this course in their first semester as a prerequisite for other advanced courses in statistics. 39 undergraduate students (7 males, 32 females) at 4th semester of psychology. Does this course fulfill a requirement and if so what requirement? The quantitative methods course in mandatory for the undergraduate students of the psychology program and it's a prerequisite for the graduate students of other universities or programs that enter to the master's program. The quantitative methods course is the last of a three courses sequence. The students take the first two courses of statistics at the mathematics department. Is there anything we should understand about the course context that we have not asked? At present the main objective of the Psychology program is to familiarize students with the philosophical, historical, theoretical and methodological dimensions of psychology, and to encourage the adoption of a critical position with regard to them. The program should develop a capacity and attitude which favors research, so that students may make contributions to their discipline, and to the solution of social problems. That's why the quantitative course is mandatory for the undergraduate students.

PROCEDURE How do you plan to teach the course to the on-line students (e.g. One introductory explanatory lecture and then I do not see them until the mid-term; one recitation per week plus email advising hours)? The students should study the OLI modules at home or anywhere with access to internet and in the classroom we resolve questions about concepts, exercises, examples, etc. In the classroom we have groups of four to five students that work together to solve cases with psychological data prepared by me. To solve the problems they have to use the SPSS and the concepts that they studied in the OLI course. We have three ours of class per week that are broken in two sessions of one our and a half. They also have the opportunity to have problem/solving sessions with a teaching assistant. The teaching assistant is a postgraduate student. Who is responsible for contact with the students: you, a TA, a combination? Me and the TA. Which units and/or modules of the course are you using? We are using the first module of the Causal Reasoning Course and all the Units of the Statistical course except the probability unit. How are you grading students in the course (quizzes, attendance, midterms, etc) We are grading students in the course with the OLI quizzes, classroom activities, one midterm and one final exam. Is there anything we should understand about how you are running the course that we have not asked about?

PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH If you have a recitation or formal contact with the students how are you structuring it (e.g. discuss quiz problems? what questions do you have today? Let's look at a few examples from the case library and apply what was covered in this module; what are the four or five main concepts covered in this module and what are instances of them, etc)? I begin each session asking the students what are the main concepts covered in the module and what they understand about each. I ask them for examples to illustrate each concept and discuss the problems they find resolving the OLI exercises or the quizzes. When I am sure that they understand the main concepts I explain the classroom activity that they have to solve in group. Weekly I also use some presentations in power point to synthesize in Spanish the concepts they study in English. What if anything will you share with students about effective ways to study or take a course on line? I emphasize the importance of the online course, the opportunity it brings to see abstract concepts in the applets and to have immediate feedback. We are monitoring the performance of those students that print out the modules because they doesn’t have internet at home, have a negative attitude toward computers or have problems with reading in English. The TA has special sessions with these students to show them the advantages of study the course on line. I also try to share with the students my enthusiasm with the resources that the OLI offer to prepare my classes. When you are discussing a new or difficult idea do you start with a clean and abstract definition and then instantiate it with interesting examples or do you start with an example and try to move to the abstract? Or do you do something entirely different? I start with an example and try to move to the abstract idea. How do you plan to use StatTutor in the course? Are you using StatTutor labs in addtion to those in the course? If so, are they labs that you designed? I’m not using the StatTutor in the course. Are you giving any additional assignments besides the questions in the modules and the quizzes and the StatTutor labs and if so what sort? They have to resolve psychological research problems in classroom. I prepare the case in spanish and give them the data to answer the research questions using the SPSS. They also have to read research reports to find how the researchers use the quantitative methods to analyze data and answer research questions. It is important to mention that I send the cases and the data for the exercises via e-mail to the students and in the classroom they have a computer for their own use. Is there anything we should understand about your pedagogical approach that we have not asked about?

LEARNING Please describe how you think learning takes place? Do you, for example, imagine that a student develops a vague sense of the material and over time and with practice fills in the details? Do you believe that learning takes place as a series of fairly discrete building blocks each of which needs to be mastered in turn, and, when mastered results in understanding and competence of the content? Or, do you have another view altogether? I think that learning takes places when the student can understand the content and find that it is meaningful for what he is doing or wants to do in the future. That’s why I think that students "learn by doing" and when we as teachers create an active learning context were students and teachers are in permanent interaction. Please describe, in as detailed a way as you can, how you imagine a good student might go through the on line material in the most effective way possible.

Motivation Please describe why you are using the statistics course or statTutor. The undergraduate students of psychology have many problems with the quantitative methods for psychology courses and I think some of their problems have to do with: their negative attitude toward mathematics and statistics, the lack of confidence in their abilities to understand abstract concepts and to resolve well statistical problems, the complexity of the statistical textbooks and the pedagogical methods we use. What pedagogical, teaching or learning challenge(s) are you trying to address in using this course or in using StatTutor? For example, you may want to discuss a particular learning problem that your students faced, or difficulty in teaching a particular concept. My challenge is to change the students’ attitude toward quantitative methods and to increase their quantitative self-efficacy beliefs.