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.). Virtual High School based in Frankfort, KY delivering content to students throughout the state of Kentucky. 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. 25 students, 1 section. All students are taking the the course online. What is the composition of the class in terms of year, level, gender, ethnicity, etc? Students are 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. 11 F 14 M. 2 East Indian, 1 African-American, 1 Mexican-American, 1 Russian, and 20 Caucasian. Does this course fulfill a requirement and if so what requirement? For some students it is fulfilling a HS math requirement. Most students are taking it as a HS elective with hope of earning college credit through the AP exam in May 2006. Is there anything we should understand about the course context that we have not asked? I am requiring a text for the course which the KVHS is providing. The course is cost-free to the students. The KVHS will be paying for the AP exam in May as well.

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 course will be delivered entirely online. I will not see the students at any time throughout the course. Who is responsible for contact with the students: you, a TA, a combination? I contact all of the students via email regularly and usually phone each student once a month. Which units and/or modules of the course are you using? I am using all of the units in the Statistics course. I may add a few lessons from the Causal Reasoning course. How are you grading students in the course (quizzes, attendance, midterms, etc) The students will be graded by written assessment created by me. There will be 12 exams and 24 written assignments. Is there anything we should understand about how you are running the course that we have not asked about? I am using the OLI course as the foundation for an AP Statistics course. The material is well presented and fosters conceptual understanding instead of rote memorization. I do find that the course lacks assessments consistent with my needs but I have no problem providing them.

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)? The main communication is through email. The students are asked to do the lessons on the OLI site and read corresponding material in The Practice of Statistics. The Practice of Statistics also provides the students with additional sample problems. What if anything will you share with students about effective ways to study or take a course on line? The students must understand that they are to work steadily through the course. Being absent for extended periods leads to poor performance. Another important concept I convey to the students is to contact me if they are having any trouble with the content or their computer. I stress that they need to use email and the phone. 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? A lot of my "teaching" is done after the students have been exposed to the concepts. If they are having trouble I will provide examples. 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 am using the embedded StatTutors as a graded assignment. I think they are excellent for reeforcing the concepts presented in the lessons. Are you giving any additional assignments besides the questions in the modules and the quizzes and the StatTutor labs and if so what sort? Yes, I have written 24 assignments to correspond to lessons in the course. I also have written 12 exams with MC and Free Response questions. Is there anything we should understand about your pedagogical approach that we have not asked about? I can't think of anything at this time.

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? In mathematics and foriegn language I think learning takes place as discrete packets. The big picture is revealed after the packets are connected by the individual. Everyone may not get the big picture in its entirity but they do get the gist of it. A real world example: Have your students sit on the side of the road and watch cars go by. Have each student describe a car. Some students will describe the car with great detail, others will have a basic description. The students all know it is a car(the big picture) but some will see more of it(discrete packets) than the others. In other disciplines students may learn differently. 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. The hardest part of learning online is getting use to the format of the course. The student must have some technology skills to be successful. The outstanding students I have had in the past worked at a consistent pace. In addition, the good student is not hestitant to initiate contact with the instuctor.

Motivation Please describe why you are using the statistics course or statTutor. The main reason is the concepts are presented in a succinct non-cluttered way. Other on line courses I have used delve into minutia. 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. I don't think I'm addressing any challenges mentioned above. The students enrolled in the course are here because they want to be. It is a course not offered at their school but they have an interest in learning statistics and this course fulfills that need.