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Dear Rodney, I think your idea is excellent, but your seasons are all out of whack, or ours are. I'd love to get my students working with yours if we can work out the schedule. I teach at a small college in Ohio, where I have about 70 students per spring semester (January-April). If you teach stats in this time frame, let's talk about how we can organize our groups. If you like, you can email me directly at <[log in to unmask]>. I've taken some heat before for putting direct messages on the list serve, but when I tried the email listed in your message it failed. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks, Joe Nowakowski At 10:57 AM 4/27/01 +1000, you wrote: >Dear colleagues, > >I teach a first-year statistics class at QUT in Brisbane, Australia. About >400-500 students take this class each year. Most are science majors, but >there are also majors in education, information techology, health, law, >arts and business. > >The class covers what you might expect of such a first-year class: types of >data, displaying data, Normal distribution, sampling distributions, tests >of hypotheses, interval estimation, comparisons of means and variances, >experimental design and ANOVA, regression, discrete data and tables, and a >few curiosities. Students have prac classes using Minitab v12. > >Part of the assessment is a group project in gathering and presenting data >(statistical analysis forms a secondary component of the >project). Students work in teams of 4, 5 or 6 over the space of about 7 >teaching weeks, and present their projects as a set of simple webpages. It >is an optional item of assessment: if a student chooses to do the project >then the mark counts about 12% towards their grade only if it is to their >advantage. About half the class chooses to do the project. They conduct a >lot of their collaboration through electronic chat rooms and email, which >would easily allow students outside of QUT to take part. > >Would you be interested in having your students and my students work on >joint projects? > >I believe there would be excellent opportunities for some cultural >learning, as well as providing interesting scenarios for statistical >comparisons. > >Our next semester runs from mid-July through to the end of >October. Students would need to start on their projects in mid- to >late-September. > >If you are interested in taking part, I would be most willing to negotiate >organisation of the project to accommodate your teaching requirements and >class schedule. > >I look forward to hearing from you! > >All good wishes, > >Rodney > >----- > >Dr Rodney Wolff >Centre in Statistical Science and Industrial Mathematics >School of Mathematical Sciences >Queensland University of Technology >GPO Box 2434 >Brisbane QLD 4001 >AUSTRALIA > >Tel +61 7 3864 5196 >Fax +61 7 3864 2310 > > Joseph M. Nowakowski Associate Professor of Economics Muskingum College New Concord, OH 43762 (740) 826-8206