From Curriculum Guidelines to Learning Objectives: A Survey of Five Statistics Programs

Abstract

The 2000 ASA Guidelines for Undergraduate Statistics majors aimed to provide guidance to programs with undergraduate degrees in statistics as to the content and skills that statistics majors should be learning. With new guidelines forthcoming, it is important to help programs develop an assessment cycle of evaluation. How do we know the students are learning what we want them to learn? How do we improve the program over time? The first step in this process is to translate the broader Guidelines into institution-specific measurable learning outcomes. This paper provides examples of how five programs did so for the 2000 Guidelines. We hope they serve as illustrative examples for programs moving forward with the new guidelines.