Use of Elluminate in Online Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences

Distance learning at many universities is on the rise to meet the increasing demands of a changing student popula­tion that continues to choose online classes in greater numbers each year. The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of teaching statistics three different ways: onsite, online with live text chat, and online using Elluminate. Content assessments revealed that teaching online with Elluminate resulted in gains 16% above the other online class and 11.4% above the onsite class. Attitude assessments showed a similar finding, suggesting that students learn statistics better online with the right tools.