Student Maths Skills Project

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• Student Maths Skills Project
• Rebecca Whitehead Moira Peelo
• CELT

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Why?

• The question has been asked Are students less
  well prepared for the maths and quantitative
  skills in their degrees?
• Many departments are responding to this issue
  with innovative work but it is difficult to share
  this information between departments
• TQEF funding was provided for a one year half
  time project to investigate this issue

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Aims of the project

• To identify all departments that teach maths or
  quantitative methods to students (other than
  those on Mathematics degree schemes)
• To explore departments responses to students
  learning needs and problems
• To identify good practice at department level for
  dissemination.
• To conduct a study of students perceptions and
  of the problems they face

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The People Involved

• Rebecca Whitehead Project Officer, 1 year half
  time (CELT)
• Moira Peelo Project Manager, Co-ordinator of
  Student Learning Development Centre (CELT)

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Steering Group

• Prof Mandy Chetwynd (Chair, Pro Vice Chancellor)
• Dr Andrew Folkard (Geography)
• Dr Catherine Fritz (Educational Research)
• Dr Moira Peelo (CELT)
• Dr Alan Thomson (Biological Sciences)
• Dr Michael Winstanley (History)
• Dr Rebecca Whitehead (CELT)
• Dr Michael Wright (Management School)

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Overview of last years work

• Pilot work
• Student interviews
• Focus groups
• Staff interviews
• Audit work
• Student questionnaire
• Online questionnaire for undergraduate students

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Methodology Questionnaire

• We used QMP (Question Mark Perception)
• Took a focussed and strategic approach to get to
  the students
• Very successful approach

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Overview of data

• Questionnaire was completed by 825 students (just
  over 10 of the undergraduate population)
• FASS 242 responses (6)
• FST 278 responses (13)
• Management School 243 responses (13)
• The questionnaire included the question do you
  use maths in your degree scheme?  535 of the 825
  respondents said they did (280 said not and 10
  were blank)

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Students with problems (1)

• One trigger for the project was concern about
  students who were struggling with quantitative
  work
• In the questionnaire the students were asked if
  they have had any problems with mathematical or
  quantitative work in their degrees (they only
  answered this question if they actually use
  maths, 535 students)

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Students with problems (2)

• Students were offered five categories to rate
  their problems (huge problems, some problems, not
  many problems, very few problems, no problems)
• For the purposes of analysis we collapsed these
  categories into 3 students with huge problems,
  some problems and very few or no problems

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Numbers

• Students with huge problems 22
• Students with some problems 172
• Rest of the students with few or no problems
  329

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Lectures
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What does this show?

• Those with huge problems were unlikely to find
  lectures helpful
• Those with some problems were likely to find
  lectures quite helpful or adequate
• Finally those with few problems were most likely
  to find lectures helpful.

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Common theme

• The majority of students were in agreement that
  lectures were not the best place to teach maths.
• They agreed that the format for teaching should
  be
• Explanation
• Practice
• Feedback
• More practice

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Student voice

• It doesnt work in a lecture style environment,
  you need to be able to ask a lot of questions and
  work through examples and told where you went
  wrong. It would work better in tutorial groups
• I think that lectures on Maths are not very
  useful because its easier to learn Maths when
  you are actually doing it yourself. Then you can
  develop your understanding.

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Student voice (2)

• Everyone on my course agrees the best style of
  teaching maths is this Go through the work in
  lectures, have a workshop where you try questions
  similar to the homework, and then have weekly
  coursework. The coursework should be clearly
  marked and solutions should be made available
  online with COMPLETED notes.

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What do staff think?

• Need smaller classes and more time. Tutorials
  used to be 8-10 students for 2 hours. Now there
  is 1 hour for 120 students. They are meant to
  work in small groups but this is not practical in
  a lecture theatre. There is a real issue with the
  lack of space. It is difficult to find a space
  where 120 students can work in small groups at
  tables rather than banked lecture theatres.
• From a lecturer in the Management School

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Conclusion

• Clearly there is some agreement between staff and
  students about the appropriateness of the lecture
  method in teaching
• Large numbers of students do find that they can
  learn something from lectures
• However there must be different approaches for
  different groups of students teaching problem
  of large, mixed ability classes

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Website

• If you are interested in any of the work from the
  Maths Project our report can be found online
• http//www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/celt/sldc/materials/n
  umbers.htm