Just submitted my paper, “Investigating the use and usefulness of instant messaging in an elementary statistics course” for ICOTS 7, to be held in Salvador, Brazil next year.

Abstract:

Instant messaging is a way of sending short messages to other users who are currently online in “real time” and is a rapidly growing medium by which many students are choosing to communicate with each other. A pilot study into the use of instant messaging was carried out with two large elementary statistics classes. This study will report back on the virtual office-hours service, advantages and disadvantages of online study groups and reflections on how instant messaging could change help-support services for students studying statistics.

I’ve been working on this research on and off for the last couple of years, so it’s great to finally have a paper with some results in it, rather than just discussing the concept. As soon as the paper is available online, I’ll link up.

We’ll be taking a bit of a holiday while in South America and plan to check out: Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, Igacu Falls, the Amazon and Peru - including Machu Picchu.