Search

A carefully constructed method of assessment using short, formative, invigilated in-tutorial quizzes is investigated to see how successful this method is compared to previous assessment tasks. We look at whether student engagement increased, given that students who enter university often face issues with the transition from school, and engagement is a factor affecting their success. First-year mathematics courses see a wide variety of students from various mathematical backgrounds who may not know or have little experience with, how to approach their tertiary study. This paper presents a way of using assessment to engage and motivate students who are studying first-year mathematics at university. Assessment is an essential feature of student learning and it is important to use it effectively to benefit the education and learning practices of students. Our study focuses on a particular method of assessment which we found to be successful. We will introduce this method and analyse its effectiveness using both quantitative and qualitative data obtained from a cohort of students enrolled in a large first-year mathematics unit in an Australian university. Furthermore, we give the academic a list of guidelines should they wish to adapt this assessment into their own teaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Graduates with well-developed capabilities in finance are invaluable to our society and in increasing demand. Universities face the challenge of designing finance programmes to develop these capabilities and the essential knowledge that underpins them. Our research responds to this challenge by identifying threshold concepts that are central to the mastery of finance and by exploring their potential for informing curriculum design and pedagogical practices to improve student outcomes. In this paper, we report the results of an online survey of finance academics at multiple institutions in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The outcomes of our research are recommendations for threshold concepts in finance endorsed by quantitative evidence, as well as a model of the finance curriculum incorporating finance, modelling and statistics threshold concepts. In addition, we draw conclusions about the application of threshold concept theory supported by both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Our methodology and findings have general relevance to the application of threshold concept theory as a means to investigate and inform curriculum design and delivery in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]