Abstract
The goal of this paper is to evaluate the level of statistical literacy of students at universities before attending statistical courses. Complementary to this it also provides suggestion on how to modify other subjects of university study plan not directly related to statistics in order to improve statistical skills of students.
The level of knowledge of statistical concepts is determined by a survey with 535 university students of different fields of study including students of information technology. This research provides evidence that statistical skills of corresponding students are not high especially for notions like standard deviation or interquartile range.
Although there are differences between students of different study fields, the need for improvement can be considered general. This includes also students of information technology that are of no difference.
To solve this situation, we suggest modifying courses of primary study field in a way that helps to improve statistical literacy as well as provide a deeper understanding of topics from a corresponding course. This modification is based on a specific project design of tasks assigned to students.
We show this approach on a particular example of modification of two consecutive courses organized at Unicorn College, Prague.