Evidence Based Reasoning / Statistical Literacy Teaching Statistics and Econometrics

Outdated education models, technological advances and increasing enrollment of students have led to involve Web-based education in some economics classes of various universities. The options range from Web-based applications in traditional classes to complete online courses without any face-to-face contact. Two facts are stressed with special regard to statistics and econometrics classes in this paper. These are, firstly, the problems tutors have to teach students the essential contents of the courses (this refers also to many aspects of economic undergraduate courses) and, secondly, the problems tutors face to find the right way to teach by using the possibilities the technological advance offers to education methods. Given that only a few written sources on teaching statistics and econometrics exist and having in mind that econometrics is part of the economics education, articles regarding research in overall economic education will also be analyzed in this paper. Due to the latest articles the aim of the paper is to compare and combine the findings of different studies carried out in order to find the best way of teaching econometrics and statistics. After a short introduction the main part of the paper gives an overview of the conventional way of teaching statistics and econometrics and indicates the problems involved. This is followed by a section on new initiatives in the education of econometrics and statistics. Thereinafter, three forms of teaching – traditional (off-line) instruction, hybrid Internet-based instruction and Internet-based instruction – will be dealt with to see in how far the proposed initiatives already have been applied on the subjects. In the last part a conclusion is drawn to summarize the main findings and to show the direction of future teaching in this field. As it already became clear in the headline subject matter of this paper is the aspect of teaching and not learning; the work deals exclusively with the perspectives of the teaching institutions and not of those on the receiving end of the instruction.