Homework 

It is important for students to practice what they have learned. Yet most students will not do homework problems unless you assign and collect them. But it takes too much time to collect and grade all that homework! Here are ways that experienced stats teachers have dealt with this:

• Some professors assign homework but do not collect it. However, they give quizzes based on the homework assignments either every class, or every week. They have the students do just two or three problems from the textbook that had been previously assigned (two classes before, so you have gone over any questions) for homework.
• Some professors collect homework every class. The professor then gives the homework a grade from 1 to 3, or 1 to 5, with the highest grade given to students who tried every or nearly every problem. Note that the professor is not grading the homework for correctness, only completeness. Professors who use this strategy report that it takes about 20 minutes for each homework set, to assign and log the grades.

Quizzes

It is important for students to know how they are doing in class. Frequent quizzes help students to find trouble spots and also to understand your expectations for what they should be learning.

• Quizzes can be given at the very start of class, to encourage students to come on time. Some instructors who do this do not allow students who come more than 6 minutes late to take the quiz.
• It is easiest to not allow make ups on quizzes, for any reason. If you do this, you can drop the lowest three quiz grades, so that students who miss a quiz for a good reason feel better, and students who come to every class have a reward.
• Quizzes can be given at the end of class, to allow students who take longer to spend extra time on the quiz.
• In a crowded class room, it is wise to give two different quizzes (Quiz A and Quiz B) so that students who are sitting next to each other have different quizzes. This is easy to do by changing the numbers slightly, or just reordering the problems.

Keeping quizzes short (about 10 to 15 minutes) ensures that your class time is not taken up. To see how long a quiz will take students, take it yourself, and then triple or quadruple that time. Sample quizzes can be found on this website.

Collect data from your students!

Collecting data from your students gives you a rich source of data that can be used in various contexts throughout the semester. Students will be particularly interested in data that describes their own class and that is relevant to them.

Data You Might Collect

• Borough
• Minutes it takes to get to BMCC
• Age (this can be sensitive for some students, so I tell them they do not have to put it up; I put up my own age — I am in my 50’s — as a deliberate outlier)
• Number of pets (of any kind) — this is also good data to produce some outliers
• Number of semesters they have completed at BMCC (this way you can start at 0)

For correlation and regression

• Height and Shoe size (Men should subtract 1 from their shoe size)
• Number of credits they are taking this semester and Number of classes they are taking this semester

 Data You Probably Should Not Collect

• Weight
• Race

How to Collect the Data: 

• Have students come up to the board in groups of 5 or 6 to write it on the board.
• Have students enter the data directly into Excel as they finish a quiz
• If you teach in a computer classroom, have students answer a survey using Survey Monkey or other free survey software.
• Have a show of hands for each category