This course blends Introductory Statistics from OpenStax with other OER to offer a first course in statistics intended for students majoring in fields other than mathematics and engineering. Lumen has curated, designed, and built additional resources to enhance both the teaching and learning experience.
Each module begins with a prerequisite material review section, in which critical concepts from Prealgebra, Beginning Algebra, Intermediate Algebra and College Algebra are revisited. Additionally, just-in-time review of essential math concepts appear throughout the text to help those students who need further learning support. The course includes embedded algorithmically generated practice questions, worked-example videos, and a complete set of outcome-aligned online assessments in OHM. This course focuses on the applications of statistical knowledge rather than the theory behind it.
The foundation of the text is Introductory Statistics, by Barbara Illowsky and Susan Dean. The development choices for this textbook were made with the guidance of many faculty members who are deeply involved in teaching this course. These choices led to innovations in art, terminology, and practical applications, all with a goal of increasing relevance and accessibility for students. We strove to make the discipline meaningful, so that students can draw from it a working knowledge that will enrich their future studies and help them make sense of the world around them.
Course Improvements
We believe in making continuous improvements to our courses in order to enhance and facilitate student learning. The newest version of the course will include a vast number of data-driven improvements to assessment questions and text content in order to better illustrate, clarify, and evaluate concepts.
Contributors
This course was developed by Lumen Learning with significant contributions by:
Primary Content Authors
Leigh Nataro, Moravian University
Valerie LaVoice, Community College of New Hampshire
Janine Peters, Olivet College
Carrie Ritter, NC State University
… as well as the eyes and feedback of many other faculty and institutions.
About Lumen
Lumen Learning courseware is based on open educational resources (OER). When we can find well designed, effective OER that are appropriately licensed, we use them in our courseware. When we can’t find pre-existing OER, we create original content and license it as OER (under a Creative Commons Attribution license).
Lumen’s authoring process doesn’t end when our courseware is released. Our choice to adopt open educational resources means that we have the copyright permissions necessary to engage in continuous improvement of our learning content. Consequently, our courses are continually being revised and updated. Errata reported for our courseware are fixed in a matter of days, as opposed to the traditional model in which errors persist until the next “edition” is printed (often a year or more). Students and faculty can suggest improvements to our courses directly from within the courseware as they use it. And we conduct regular analyses to determine where students are struggling the most in our courseware, and make improvements that specifically target these areas.
Given our unique approach, our list of authors and other contributors may look different than the lists you are used to seeing. We provide both a list of the primary content authors (the people involved in the initial creation of the course) and a list of everyone who has contributed suggestions and other improvements to the course since it was first released. We invite you to join us as we create courseware that supports student learning more effectively each semester.
If you’d like to connect with us to learn more about adopting this course, please Contact Us.
You can also make an appointment for OER Office Hours to connect virtually with a live Lumen expert about any question you may have.
