How Are Students Learning in a Business Statistics Course? Evidence from Both Direct and Indirect Assessment

Abstract

This paper studies how both direct and indirect assessment outcomes can determine how students are learning different concepts in business statistics. We explore connections between the outcomes from the two assessment approaches and how different student characteristics and background factors impact these two methods of assessment. The results based on a sample of 64 students enrolled in an undergraduate business statistics course at a large public university designated as a minority-serving institution show some similarities and some differences among the two types of assessment outcomes and the insights they provide about overall student learning in the course. Furthermore, factors like gender and background grade point average are seen to impact both direct and indirect assessment results, whereas others such as the type of business concentration and student status only impact one type of assessment. Finally, we show that some indirect assessment outcomes can predict direct assessment outcomes while controlling for demographic and other background variables.