Educational Leadership Doctoral Students’ Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Instructional Strategies and Course Design in a Fully Online Graduate Statistics Course

Abstract

In the past several decades, higher education has witnessed the exponential growth of online learning. New technology has dramatically transformed the way education is delivered compared to what takes place in the traditional classroom. It has enabled online delivery of course materials to students outside of face-to-face classroom in an asynchronous manner and provide them with self-paced flexibility. Given the abstract nature of statistics content, effectiveness of the instructional strategies and course design in online statistics instruction has become particularly important to students’ learning success. In this qualitative study, the authors explored perceptions of the Educational Leadership doctoral students towards an online graduate level introductory statistic course in terms of whether the online course instructional strategies and course design helped them learn statistics. The authors assessed effectiveness of the instructional strategies and design of the online statistics course as well as students’ needs, so more effective instructional strategies could be used for online statistics teaching. Students identified the PowerPoint presentations with recorded lectures to be the most useful strategy. This strategy, along with live Q&A sessions and guided practices and activities, helped to connect the textbook information and its application to the real world.