Thisstudy involved developing digital multimedia materials and assessing theirinfluence on students’ attitudes and anxiety towards statistics in a statistics course at a University of Science and Technology. Digital teaching materials were developed for Descriptive Statistics and Probability courses, they featured graphical and visualization techniques to assist students in analyzing data, thinking about statistical ideas, and focusing on the interpretation of results and the understanding of concepts. We assessed students’ attitudes and anxiety when they began the course and after they had completed it. Significant effects were observed in 4 attitude scales (affect, value, difficulty, and cognitive competence) and 3 anxiety scales (learning anxiety, examination anxiety, and interpretation anxiety). The difference in scores (posttest-pretest) increases in attitudes and decreases in anxiety which were attributed to using the digital multimedia educational materials. A partial least squares method was used to test the effects of students’ statistics anxiety, attitudes toward statistics, and application of digital teaching materials on their achievement in an introductory statistics course. The results of the study revealed that statistics anxiety and attitudes towards statistics were the most accurate predictors of students’ achievement in statistics at the beginning of the course. Nevertheless, the analysis indicated that only students’ attitudes were a critical factor, directly affecting directly their achievements at the ending of the course. In addition, statistics anxiety exerted an indirect effect on the achievementsin statistics by influencing the attitudes of the students towards statistics anxiety. This paper presents a discussion of the implications of these findings for teaching and learning statistics.
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Developing Digital Multimedia Educational Materials in an Introductory Statistics Course at a University of Science and Technology
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