Sports and Stats and Information Literacy

It's March Madness. While I don't normally watch basketball, I have been watching a lot of college basketball these past two weeks, because I have a bracket. I want to win (I have a whole $5 on this bracket).

Here's hoping!

As I've been watching, I've been inundated with stats. What team has the most rebounds? Who's the best? How many times has a 12 seed hit a 3-point basket in the last 5 minutes of a game? How many times have underdogs become top dogs? What defense is the best defense?

And I've noticed, every team has a statistician.

The coach is busy coaching, and Gatorade (or Powerade) guy/gal is Gatorading, and the statistician is recording stats to help assess the team.

They are probably excited about assessment. Image source: UWBadgers.com

What if every classroom had a statistician? Someone that could track students in-class participation, their individual or group activity time, the formative assessment stats that are hard to track. Maybe during halftime, the score board would show up.

Some problems:

• Learning isn't meant to always be competitive. I want all students to succeed and have information literacy skills. Additionally some students do not thrive in a competitive atmosphere.
• What stats are important? This changes depending on the activity and the student learning outcomes.
• Too many members on the team. If I'm in a class of 30 students, all of them have the same role. It's not like a football team with 11 players on the field. Is everyone the starting quarterback?   

Some ideas:

• What if the classroom was more competitive? See articles on gamification of the classroom (http://selfloud.net/games-at-ucf/)
• What if students had different roles? The outcome would be the same (i.e. win the game), but maybe teamwork would play an important factor. Maybe some students are the talkers; other students are the collaborators; a few students are the recorders. 
• What if I had a dedicated statistician in my class?