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Time | Event | Location |
---|---|---|
9.00-9.40 | Registration & Coffee/Tea | Outside AM214, Arts Millennium Building |
9.40 - 10.00 | Opening Address: Prof. Nollaig Mac Congáil, Registrar and Deputy President Ms Trish Hoare, Mature Students Officer Mr Emmet Connolly, Education Officer, Students' Union |
AM214, Siobhán McKenna Theatre, Arts Millennium Building |
10.00 - 10.25 | Lisa O'Keeffe, with John O'Donoghue and Olivia Gill (Maths Learning Centre, UL) "Should Maths Learning Centres be more Proactive?" | |
10.30 - 10.55 | Ciaran O'Sullivan, Donal Healy, Paul Robinson (IT Tallaght) "Mathematics Support Centres: The need for early and contextualised supports" | |
11.00 - 11.20 | Ciarán Mac an Bhaird (NUI Maynooth) "Reactions to Student Engagement with Mathematics Supports" | |
11.20 - 11.45 | Discussion and Coffee | Foyer |
11.50 - 12.20 | Shazia Ahmed and Sue Milne - (University of Glasgow) "MathAssess in Level 1 Biology and Geography" | AM214, Arts Millennium Building |
12.20 - 12.40 | Maura Clancy (NUI Galway) "SUMS: having the students help us" | |
12.40 - 1.00 | Nuala Curley (UCD) "Adapting Maths Support Centres to WebworK" | |
1.00 - 2.15 | Lunch | An Bhialann |
2.20 - 3.50 | Ciarán Mac an Bhaird and Maura Clancy facilitating the keynote workshop discussion prompted by a reflection paper and presentation of Prof. Duncan Lawson on the workshop theme | AM214 |
The expansion of mathematics support provision within institutions and the year on year growth in the uptake of the support being offered has led some involved in providing this support to ask the question "How much mathematics support is enough" or, to put it another way, 'Should there be a limit on the amount of mathematics support we aim to provide' (henceforth, this will be referred to in this piece as the question). The question is very difficult to answer and, as far as the author is aware, there has been little or no systematic programme of research to seek an answer. In this discussion paper I will not provide a definitive answer to the question, indeed the reader will need to look very hard to find any kind of answer (definitive or otherwise). Instead, I will suggest a possible framework for beginning to explore some of the facets of the question and point to 'sub-questions' which I hope may stimulate discussion and debate which may help move the community towards an answer to the question.
A suite of tools for creating, editing and delivering questions and tests conforming to the IMS QTI v2.1 standard have been developed over the last few years, funded by JISC and HEA under the MathAssess and FETLAR projects. The tools include extensions to QTIv2.1 specifically designed for displaying and manipulating mathematical expressions. They are available from the FETLAR website at http://fetlar.bham.ac.uk and comprise of editors for questions and tests and a virtual machine, the FETLAR Virtual Appliance, which deploys the web-based delivery software.
As part of the Maths Support provision at Glasgow University an internal project has been funded, aimed at creating a collection of basic questions in Mathematics which can be customised for use in a variety of disciplines. In addition, we have run a 2-session training course introducing the MathAssess QTI tools and giving participants hands-on experience of using them. We will report on the progress of the development activity and some lessons learned during the training course.
Effective targeting of supports and interventions to enhance student learning and promote student success is essential particularly given the present financial constraints being faced by higher level institutes.
In this paper the insights for the timing and nature of such supports gained from a review of first year student progression on certificate engineering students over a 6 year period are presented. In particular the importance of early and contextualised supports are discussed. Also presented is an example of how a dialogue arising from such an examination of the effectiveness of student supports informed a major structural change in engineering course provision.
Finally this analysis of student progression at IT Tallaght and its implications for student academic supports is examined in the wider context of enhancing student retention in the national context of the recent HEA report ' Study of Progression in Irish Higher Education' and international context as highlighted by Professor Vincent Tinto at the conference launching the report. In particular the paper explores the need for changing roles for Mathematics support centres which will require them to ensure that the supports they provide are more directly connected to the lecture/tutorial room experience and to also act as a catalyst for enhancing student involvement with their learning through the building of learning communities.
In this paper we will give an overview of the extra supports and initiatives we have introduced in the National University of Ireland Maynooth for students who either do not engage or do not engage successfully with traditional maths supports. These supports include subject specific workshops, online courses and a mentoring scheme. The majority of these supports try to target at risk students in particular. The extra initiatives include a monitoring scheme established by the Department of Mathematics which contacts students by email and letter when they have missed a certain number of tutorials or have not submitted assignments. The student monitor also checks on students' engagement with the online courses. These courses are principally for students who have failed the diagnostic test and are deemed at risk. The students are also given the opportunity to talk to a member of staff about their situation and how best to address it. This initiative was as a result of an ongoing study into the reasons why students do not engage with mathematics or mathematics support.
We also give a brief overview of a mentoring scheme which was run in 2009\10. The students involved were almost exclusively students who were repeating at least one module of mathematics. This scheme was successful, the majority of students who engaged with it got through the year. However, again some students did not engage and the scheme was extremely time consuming.
Finally, we finish with a general discussion on where we should draw the line with these extra supports. Students do have to take responsibility for their own learning at some point. However, a number of studies have highlighted that weaker students often do not engage because of fear of mathematics. We need to decide how to deal with these issues effectively.