Conceptual Statistical Assessment Using JSXGraph

Abstract

Traditionally online assessments tend to focus on topics that require students to input algebraic and numeric responses. As such there is a paucity of questions that test students' knowledge of statistics, and what questions there are in our experience focus on computing specific values (mean, standard deviation, and so on). Through making use of a technology called JSXGraph that is supported within the STACK environment for online assessment of mathematical knowledge, we have developed statistics questions that aim to test conceptual knowledge. For example, by requiring students to adjust the bars in a graph in order to produce a dataset that has a required mean, median, mode and range. With careful design this approach enables open-ended questions that have more than one correct answer. In this paper we describe the questions we have designed, and report responses from a sample of students.