What’s in a Team? Peer Effects in the Introductory Statistics Classroom

It is widely accepted that active learning and group work generally enhance learning in the statistics classroom, but how should those groups be formed? This study aims to better understand the characteristics of a productive team in the undergraduate introductory statistics course. Specifically, we explore the relationship between the attitudes of a student’s teammates and that student’s academic performance in both individual and group settings. We find moderate evidence that positive teammate attitudes towards statistics are associated with greater improvement from a student’s individual to the team exam score. If we can better understand what combination of student characteristics results in productive teams, instructors can be intentional with how they form groups in the classroom, realizing the full efficacy of active learning.