INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO EDUCATION AND TEACHING OF STATISTICS

Educational and tutorial programs are being developed together, with the changing world of information technology it is a necessary course to adapt to and accept new possibilities and needs. Use of online learning tools can amplify our teaching resources and create new types of learning opportunities that did not exist in the pre-Internet age. The world is full of information, which needs to be constantly updated. Virtualisation of studying materials enables us to update and manage them quickly and easily. As an advantage, we see an asynchronous approach towards learning materials that can be tailored for the students´ needs and adjusted according to their time and availability. The specificness of statistical learning lies in various statistical programs. The high technical demands of these programs require tutorials (instructional presentations), which can help students to learn how to use them efficiently. Instructional presentation may be understood as a demonstration of how the statistical software program works. This is one of the options that students may use to simplify the utilization of control and navigation through the statistical system. Thanks to instructional presentations, students will be able to transfer their theoretical statistical knowledge into practical situation and real life and, therefore, improve their personal development process. The goal of this tutorial is to show an innovative approach for learning of statistics in the Czech University of Life Sciences. The use of presentations and their benefits for students was evaluated according to results obtained from a questionnaire survey completed by students of the 4th grade of the Faculty of Economics and Management. The aim of this pilot survey was to evaluate the benefits of these instructional presentations, and the students interest in using them. The information obtained was used as essential data for the evaluation of the efficiency of this new approach. Firstly the knowledge about whether the creation of these tutorials is useful and whether it contributes to better and faster management of work done within the system. The efficiency and benefits of this proposed solution were evaluated through correspondence analysis. Outputs from this multi-dimensional method suggest that interactive manuals are indeed an efficient learning tool. Mostly students with less technical knowledge welcome the benefits of these tutorials.