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Engaging and motivating students with authentic statistical projects in a capstone unit

Students preparing for professional statistical work can benefit from experience with real statistical problems presented by real clients and requiring them to engage with the complete problem-solving process without the usual cues of ‘textbook’ examples. We have used such an approach in a capstone unit in statistical consulting, asking students to write about their learning experiences and to reflect on the ways in which such consultations helped them (or not) to develop their professional statistical skills. A content analysis of students’ comments focusing on engagement and motivation confirmed that students had generally positive views of their experience and found the approach engaging and motivating. On this basis, we recommend utilising real problems from real clients as a means of including authentic practice in a professional statistics degree, with consequent benefits for students’ engagement and motivation.