An Experiential System for Learning Probability: Stat Lady Description and Evaluation.

This paper describes a computer-based instructional system called Stat Lady, and reports the results of an evaluation study that tested the efficacy of learning probability from this program in relation to a traditional Lecture and a no-treatment Control group. Results showed that both treatment groups learned significantly more than the Control group, yet there was no difference between the two treatment groups in outcome performance after three hours of instruction. This was viewed as encouraging because: (a) due to sampling error, students assigned to the Stat Lady condition were at a disadvantage, scoring about 20 points less on the quantitative SAT measure compared to the Lecture group, and about 25 points less than the Control group, (b) the lecture constituted a more familiar learning environment for these subjects, and (c) the professor administering the Lecture had more than 20 years experience teaching this subject matter, while this was Stat Lady's first teaching assignment. We also found a significant aptitude-treatment interaction where high-aptitude subjects learned more from Stat Lady than from the Lecture environment, but for low-aptitude subjects, there was no difference in learning outcome by condition. Implications of these findings will be discussed in relation to future computer-based instructional research.