Collaborative Research: Evaluation and Assessment of Teaching and Learning About Statistics (e-ATLAS)

The e-ATLAS (Evaluation and Assessment of Teaching and Learning About Statistics) project is establishing a much needed evidence-based research culture in the statistics education community to better allow it to judge the effectiveness of its past and on-going efforts. Inspired by the internet's vastly expanded reach, resources, and accelerated development of the statistics education community, the project's innovative design seeks to provide customizable instruments that assess how teachers teach and what students learn. These instruments are administered on-line as part of a globally shared digital library of resources and linked to databases supporting assessment of course innovations, project evaluation, and research informing materials. Using these instruments, the e-ATLAS project is conducting a randomized nationally representative sampling of college statistics instructors and their classrooms. This provides a baseline of information on college teaching and student learning enabling investigators to triangulate the global position of their work. Through webinars and well-indexed exemplars the e-ATLAS project then supports new investigators in their drive for effective evaluation of their work.