IMPROVING STATISTICAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY Jennifer Brown, Irene David, Elena Moltchanova, Hilary Seddon, Jenny Harlow Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch New Zealand Jennifer.Brown@canterbury.ac.nz At the University of Canterbury, NZ, the Department of Mathematics and Statistics offers a range of introductory statistics and mathematics courses. Nearly one third of the first year students enrol in our introductory statistics courses. Given this level of interest we could consider our work done: we don't! We have an integrated programme to improve statistical literacy across all the campus. In this presentation we discuss our work in supporting students with very low levels of numeracy via learning skills support, through to supporting postgraduate students with their higher level statistical needs. Rather than running these as separate programmes we have pulled all these levels of support together and have integrated them into the existing university structures. We now offer a university-wide statistical service. INTRODUCTION One of the roles of a university is to prepare graduates with skills for their future. An aspect of any graduate’s future in society, today and no doubt in the future, is to be statistically literate. We are living in a “data-drenched society”, a very apt term described by Steen (1999). It is our responsibility as educators, and as statisticians, to promote, enhance and develop statistical literacy in our community. We consider statistical literacy to be enabling students to navigate the depths and shoals of the data-driven world. We want our students to have the ability to not only see and read statistical results and data-summaries, but to understand and critique them (Wallman, 1993). Statistical reasoning will be one facet of a student’s life that they will carry with them beyond university. These higher level concepts of statistical literacy, critical thinking and statistical reasoning have appeared in some of the policies and practices at the University of Canterbury (UC). The UC science student graduate profile for an undergraduate science degree refers to the attributes and skills a student will have after their 3-year degree programme. The list of specific attributes includes: • Demonstrate knowledge of and an ability to apply scientific principles and concepts • Solve problems through the application of scientific knowledge and methods • Demonstrate analytical abilities • Demonstrate the development of skills for lifelong learning • Understand, evaluate, access and critically review new information • Demonstrate the ability to think independently • Demonstrate in-depth knowledge of and skill in his or her majoring subject • Effectively access and use information relevant to the subject • Demonstrate numeracy skills • Work collaboratively on tasks • Communicate effectively both in written and spoken English Interestingly, almost all of the items in the list are skills that we consider part of a broader picture of statistical literacy. The overall theme is of a science student from UC being capable of critical thinking and the faculty aims to “provide rewarding educational experiences that develop in graduates capacities for independence and reasoning, critical analysis, effective communication and ethical and social understanding, as well as in-depth knowledge of a field of study”. The need for a broad platform of teaching and learning in statistics has been discussed for some time and is well understood in many countries (for example, see MacGillivray, 2009; Patel et al, 2010). The contribution of our department’s statistics teaching into a student’s programme of study is very diverse, but it is all directed toward statistical literacy. We provide a range of options from introductory courses, higher level statistics courses, numeracy learning support for targeted ICOTS9 (2014) Invited Paper - Refereed Brown, David, Moltchanova, Seddon & Harlow In K. Makar, B. de Sousa, & R. Gould (Eds.), Sustainability in statistics education. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS9, July, 2014), Flagstaff, Arizona, USA. Voorburg, The Netherlands: International Statistical Institute. iase-web.org [© 2014 ISI/IASE]