Bissett School of Business would like to extend congratulations to Assistant Professor, Collette Lemieux on successfully defending her doctoral thesis through the University of Calgary. Collette’s area of study was Education with a specialization in Adult learning and Mathematics Education. Collette is currently teaching Statistics in our faculty. Congratulations Collette!

The Abstract for Collette’s Thesis: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of an intervention, which uses stories to explore statistics, on post-secondary students’ understanding of statistics and their beliefs about the usefulness of statistics, and what features of the stories support meaningful learning.

            A qualitative case study approach was used. In line with the case study approach, multiple data sources were used, which consisted of student and instructor class artefacts, pre- and post-intervention written response items, and post-intervention interviews. The participants in the study were 20 students from a single first-year post-secondary business statistics course in which the intervention was implemented. Data analysis entailed a thematic approach based primarily on open-coding to identify participants’ understanding of statistics, their beliefs about the usefulness of statistics, and what features of the intervention supported meaningful learning.

            The findings suggest that the intervention supported participants development of various types of understanding of selected topics in statistics, development of understanding of the usefulness of statistics, and personalization knowledge as part of the process of developing understanding. Further, the findings indicate that the intervention served to support positive beliefs about the usefulness of statistics. Finally, the findings suggest that the features of the intervention and, in particular, the stories that impacted meaningful learning included the prompts embedded within the stories, the authentic real-world context presented in the stories, and the nature of the characters introduced in the stories.