Evaluation of a 'Painting and Puzzles Exercise Book for Statistics' for psychology first year students

Abstract

Statistics courses are challenging for many psychology students. We designed a ‘Painting and Puzzles Exercise Book for Statistics’ for first year psychology undergraduates, to repeat and deepen the course content and get prepared for the exam. We describe the development and characteristics of the book and report a longitudinal evaluation study. Users (N=72) rated the book positively and judged it as helpful, easy to use, and enjoyable. Students with initially higher skills, younger students and, those who graduated from school recently were more likely to use it. We matched users to non-users from the preceding and the evaluation cohort, respectively, on characteristics at study entry and found positive effects on achievement (exam grade and perceived management of course content) for users. We reason that the book is a valuable support that can be embedded in an ongoing course easily.