Student attitudes toward statistics before and after a computer-integratedintroductory statistics course

A validated questionnaire measuring the attitude of engineering students to ward statistics was administered to 46 male and 17 female undergraduate eng ineers during the first and last week of class. The objective was to test t he hypothesis that a newly designed computer-integrated statistics course p ositively affects students' attitudes toward statistics. For the students a s a whole, no significant difference is found between the students' attitud es before and after the course. However, some demographic characteristics i ndicate distinctions among the attitudes of students. Specifically, student s owning computers have initially a more positive attitude toward the cours e. Males also start the semester with a more positive attitude toward the a pplication of statistics to their engineering fields. At the end of the sem ester, however, these differences are no longer evident. On the other hand, students with previous exposure to statistics end the course with a more p ositive attitude than other students. Also, by the end of the semester, stu dents in industrial, manufacturing, and civil engineering tend to have a mo re positive attitude toward the usefulness of statistics in their professio n than other engineering students, Supporting previous educational research , it was found that a student's attitude toward the course is positively co rrelated with the grade received, For future curriculum development, this r esearch indicates that integration of statistics into a student's curriculu m may provide the greatest impact on improving attitudes toward statistics.