group representatives: sinéad breen (st patrick’s college), fiona lawless (dkit), seamus mcloone...

Assessment for Learning: Resources for First Year Undergraduate Mathematics Modules

Group Representatives: Sinéad Breen (St Patrick’s College), Fiona Lawless (DkIT), Seamus McLoone (MU), Caitríona Ní Shé (DCU and MU),

Ann O’Shea (MU) .

Maynooth University - Ann O’Shea, Ciarán Mac an Bhaird, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Séamus McLoone, Department of Electronic Engineering, Christine Kelly (Programmer).

Athlone Institute of Technology – Frank Doheny, School of Engineering

DCU - Eabhnat Ní Fhloinn, Brien Nolan, School of Mathematical Sciences, Connor Brennan, School of Electronic Engineering, Sinéad Breen, Department of Mathematics, St Patrick’s College Drumcondra, Caitríona Ní Shé, MSc Research Student (joint with Maynooth University).

Dundalk Institute of Technology – Fiona Lawless, Department of Computing and Mathematics

Partners:

Funded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning

We aim to create two types of formative assessment tools for use in mathematics modules.

1. An audience response system2. Interactive tasks and resources.

We have conducted a survey of staff and students to identify areas of difficulty and useful existing resources.

We have employed a programmer and a research student.

Project Overview

Assessment for Learning: Resources for first year undergraduate Mathematics modules


o Hired programmer.

o Work will start next week on developing lecturer and student apps for both IOS and Android systems.

o Identified need to record usage.

o Trialling will begin in the first semester of 2015/16.

Audience Response System

The group met and designed the staff and student questionnaires, then piloted and revised them.

The student questionnaires were administered in the four institutions (over 450 responses).

The staff questionnaires were advertised to lecturers in Mathematics and Engineering departments using email lists and personal contacts. There have been 32 responses to date.

The analysis of the data is ongoing and will be completed shortly. This data is one of the project’s major outputs so far.

Staff and Student Survey



We are working on developing the following resources:

A web inventory of useful existing resources;

Moodle Course using Khan Academy materials;

Online ‘lessons’ designed in Moodle;

Student screencast projects;

A suite of interactive tasks.

Interactive Tasks and Resources


List of useful resources is being compiled, plan to create a project website to host this and to make other outputs freely available.

We are investigating the use of lessons in Moodle – these are interactive learning packages with tasks integrated with content.

We are designing screencast projects for students – here the students will create the screencasts and share them with their class.

Progress on Resource Development


Moodle Course using Khan Academy materials – focus on topics identified in survey built around Khan Academy resources and can be utilised by individual students, module lecturers or Maths Support Services.

Suite of Tasks - designed preliminary versions of interactive tasks involving the topics in first year Calculus courses.

Progress on Resource Development


AIT DCU DKIT MU0

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Student Background

Higher Ordinary Foundation Did Not Take No Response

Student Survey

Likert questions of Understand & Do for 23 different question typesExamples of question types given to students

Open responses• Topics most difficult, easy• Helpful resources• Gaps and advice on resources

Books, handouts, videos, websites were listed as examples

Students were mainly at the end of their first year


Institute NameNumber of Responses

Athlone I.T. 1Cork Institute of Technology 4DCU 1DKIT 3Dublin Institute of Technology 2IT Blanchardstown 1IT Carlow 2IT Sligo 1IT Tallaght 1Letterkenny Institute of Technology 1Maynooth University 6Queen's University Belfast 1St Patrick's College, Drumcondra 2UCD 1Ulster University 2University of Limerick 3Total 32

Lecturer SurveyOpen response questions similar to student survey:

• Most difficult concepts

• Most difficult procedures

• Helpful resources

• Gaps in resources

• Advice on resources


Student Likert Analysis

The topics that students indicated most difficulty with are:• Finding limits of functions

using graphs and rules of limits

• Deciding whether a function is continuous or not

• Finding stationary points, optimisation

Note: Differentiation and Integration

There is a significant difference between responses from higher and ordinary level students

44%

33%

15%7%

1%

% per Likert item for all students

Strongly AgreeAgreeNeutralDisagreeStrongly Disagree


20% of ordinary level students reported problems with graphing basic functions in the Likert scale questions

25% of students mentioned Functions, Graphing and Limits in the open questions‘Graphs is a topic I find a bit difficult. When you are given a function a must graph it using specific information from the function. I just need to keep reminding myself’

13 (42%) of the lecturers mentioned Functions, Graphing and Limits‘Composition of functions’ OR ‘… struggled with the preliminary concepts of domain and range of functions

Easiest: topics covered in Leaving Cert like : linear equations, graphs, algebra functions, quadratic equations

Most Difficult Concepts and Topics


Helpful Resources

Books

Hando

uts

Video

s

Web

site

s

Other

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Student Helpful Resources

Students mentioned recommended maths books, lecture notes and handouts‘Tutorial handouts with solutions’ because‘You can attempt the questions then check if your answers are correct on the back of the sheet’Khan Academy, Wolfram Alpha, YouTube

Lecturers – similar results, 10 mentioned handouts‘Handouts in class seem to help hold attention.’Because ‘Examples in handouts seem to be retained better by students.’

Lecturers mention Khan Academy, Wolfram Alpha, mathcentre, mathtutor, Geogebra


Students Equally advocate printed, websites and video‘Possibly interactive example where students could put in their own values and be shown a step by step method and solution. Similar to wolfram alpha step by step guide but on loop and more relatable to the subject/topic’

Lecturers ‘Videos are popular with students provided they are well labelled (for

ease of navigation on a website), list the learning outcomes of each video, are byte-sized meaning of 5 minutes duration at most and covering one concept at a time’(goes on to suggest an all Ireland Maths support resource website)

Advice on Resources

Moodle Course using Khan Resources Create a Khan Academy playlist focused on common problem

topics in 1st year mathematics modules;

Provide an overview of useful Khan features: Monitoring functionality (provided by the class/coach

set-up)- assess engagement with targeted material & identify problem tasks;

Missions/ Playlists – content on whole subject areas (such as Linear Algebra) or targeted topics (such as 3x3 matrix inverses);

Personalised learning platform/Recommendations – facilitate the tailoring of content to meet individual student needs.


Interactive Geogebra Tasks Focus on concept development and conceptual

understanding

Move away from rote-learning & encourage mathematical thinking: exploring, looking for patterns, conjecturing, generalising.

Engaging students, working at own pace

Using technology effectively and appropriately http://tube.geogebra.org/student/mlZNqpaAK


http://tube.geogebra.org/student/mlZNqpaAK


We are preparing a presentation and paper on the data arising from the staff and student surveys. This will be disseminated at conferences in Ireland and abroad.

The project will highlight opportunities for increased use of formative assessment in mathematics classrooms.

The results of the evaluation of the resources will be disseminated nationally.

All outputs from the project will be available to the entire education community via a dedicated website.

In addition, the resources will be advertised through professional networks and societies.

National Impact


The audience response system will be freely available and will be useful in many situations, especially in STEM classrooms.

The resources will be made available to the whole higher education community via a dedicated website. The topics have been chosen using student input and the resources themselves aim to increase student engagement and understanding.

Evaluation of resources will provide evidence of their impact and will also indicate which resources are most effective; the research carried out in this project will add to the body of knowledge on education at tertiary level.

Top Three Benefits of this Project

group representatives: sinéad breen (st patrick’s college), fiona lawless (dkit), seamus mcloone...

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