Search

This paper explores analysis of feedback data collected from student consultations at two mathematics support centres at universities in Australia and Ireland. Unstructured text data was collected over six years and includes qualitative data on student queries collected during the consultations from mathematics and statistics related subjects. Topic modelling and clustering algorithms are used to uncover key themes in the data across stages. Common areas of difficulty experienced by undergraduate students at both universities are investigated and a comparison between them is shown. The results suggest that, despite institutional differences, there is considerable overlap in the types of mathematical and statistical difficulties experienced by students in their first and second year of university at these institutions. We discuss how the ability to uncover such common mathematical and statistical themes with the aid of text mining techniques can be used to improve the support provided by mathematics support centres in terms of providing an efficient and effective service. The code for analyses at both institutions is provided in a GitHub repository so other academic support centres may use it. Outcomes of this analysis have implications for mainstream mathematics and statistics instructors who wish to gain further insights into their students' learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Closed captioning of instructional videos is a topic that has not seen much discussion despite its importance for hearing-impaired students and recent legal ramifications if videos are not appropriately captioned. In particular, it is unclear what best practice in captioning videos should be to benefit all learners in disciplines such as mathematics with a reliance on the development of visual explanation while providing audio narration. In this paper, we report on a study undertaken at an Australian university, to investigate the perceived level of usefulness of captions and their automatic translations in a mathematics course. We discovered that students broadly agreed that captions are a useful learning feature: to allow flexibility of where and when a video is watched, but also to help understand speaker accents, and clarify explanations that are difficult to hear in the recording. Due to the high levels of use and perceived educational benefits of closed captions in online video but limited literature, there is a significant need for new research in this area. An urgent discussion is needed to explore how students engage with closed captions, how they may support learning, and to investigate implications on instructional design of mathematical videos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]