Harnessing Cellular Phones for Statistics Education in Distance Learning

摘要

This paper summarizes the experience gained at FernUniversität in two pilot projects concerned with utilizing cellular phones for higher education in the area of statistics. In the first project a complete course on descriptive statistics was developed and tried out with early WAP phones. Based on the results of the evaluation of that project, now a mobile game-like application called ‘HistoBrick’ has been designed. It serves as a platform for exercises, assignments and self-studies in combination with the formerly developed courseware. ‘HistoBrick’ aims to provide a ubiquitous tool for examining and deepening one’s knowledge about statistic distributions and their most important characteristic numbers. The didactical background is inspired by recent ideas about how learning works in the so-called constructivist setting, in general, and the findings of game-based learning, in particular.