Proposal Title
The Figure of the Day: an in-class activity to improve students’ quantitative literacy and data interpretation skills
Session Type
Presentation
Room
FNB 1200
Start Date
5-7-2019 11:00 AM
Keywords
Quantitative Literacy, Science Literacy, Graph, Gateway Science Courses, Biology
Primary Threads
Evaluation of Learning
Abstract
Quantitative and scientific literacy skills are important for undergraduate students to develop. Unfortunately, these skills are often given short-shrift in gateway science courses in favour of spending time on disciplinary content. In an attempt to solve this problem, we developed a short ice-breaker activity called The Figure of the Day where students were required to interpret visual representations of scientific data. We tested the impact of this activity in five “treatment” lab sections (81 students) and compared it to the impact of an alternate activity that was implemented in five “control” lab sections (82 students). We collected pre- and post-activity data on student graph-creation abilities, and data on student perception of the activities. Students made significant gains in their figure creation abilities in both the treatment and control sections (effect sizes, r = 0.708 and 0.688, respectively; Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test). In addition, students tended to associate the Figure of the Day activity with an improvement in their figure-interpretation and graphing skills. These results suggest that the Figure of the Day activity has the potential to result in meaningful quantitative literacy skill improvements in students.
Elements of Engagement
Attendees will participate in the "Figure of the Day" activity at the onset of the session. They will then be presented with the data our team collected on the impact of the activity and be given an opportunity to interpret the implications of the data.
This is an ongoing project and this presentation may include late-breaking findings from the work we are doing this semester.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
The Figure of the Day: an in-class activity to improve students’ quantitative literacy and data interpretation skills
FNB 1200
Quantitative and scientific literacy skills are important for undergraduate students to develop. Unfortunately, these skills are often given short-shrift in gateway science courses in favour of spending time on disciplinary content. In an attempt to solve this problem, we developed a short ice-breaker activity called The Figure of the Day where students were required to interpret visual representations of scientific data. We tested the impact of this activity in five “treatment” lab sections (81 students) and compared it to the impact of an alternate activity that was implemented in five “control” lab sections (82 students). We collected pre- and post-activity data on student graph-creation abilities, and data on student perception of the activities. Students made significant gains in their figure creation abilities in both the treatment and control sections (effect sizes, r = 0.708 and 0.688, respectively; Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test). In addition, students tended to associate the Figure of the Day activity with an improvement in their figure-interpretation and graphing skills. These results suggest that the Figure of the Day activity has the potential to result in meaningful quantitative literacy skill improvements in students.