Editorial

The editorial for Issue 22.

The new normal: What does maths and stats support and teaching look like post pandemic?

The workshop “The new normal: What does maths and stats support and teaching look like post pandemic?” took place on the 1st of December 2022 and discussed the changes to mathematics and statistics support since the lifting of restrictions after the pandemic. The event consisted of five short talks where presenters explored the changes that had occurred to mathematics and statistics support at their institutions and concluded with a discussion on how to effectively combine online and face-to-face support and how to increase engagement in all forms of support. This report summarises the talks and discussion, concluding with some thoughts on the changes still required and how we can support each other

Designing a blended delivery foundation mathematics course: Targeting self-efficacy, skill development and social connectedness

Foundation mathematics courses play a crucial role in allowing students who have not achieved the pre-requisite mathematics credits for tertiary studies to re-engage with STEM studies. This paper describes how targeting self-efficacy, skill development and social connectedness have influenced the design of a foundation mathematics course at a New Zealand university. These design goals are grounded in education literature, and the paper outlines how focusing on these goals has resulted in the design of a course that incorporates novel approaches to learning and assessment, including online and face-to-face components. These approaches include the use of large, automatically graded weekly quizzes; adaptive learning quizzes for essential skills such as fraction arithmetic; and an emphasis on face-to-face learning and connection through tutorials and collaborative problem-solving workshops. The paper concludes with reflections on the success of the course so far and raising questions for future investigation

An Accessible Maths Journey

The four narratives that follow bring together the stories from the lived experiences of a post-graduate blind maths student, her tutor, her transcriber and a learning technologist over the course of five years. It provides an insight into what is needed to help one student with their own way of learning maths. It also demonstrates how pulling at one thread can help to unravel and reveal the many lenses through which accessible maths needs to be approached

Investigating students’ perception of the importance of calculus: a cross-discipline comparison to inform module development

This study compares perceptions of calculus across disciplines in university education.  As highlighted by Rasmussen et al. (2014) further work is needed to understand the “relationship between calculus and the client disciplines of engineering, physics, biology, and chemistry”, with calculus courses often designed from the perspective of Mathematicians.  Here, we aim to give insight of when it is appropriate to group such disciplines together for taught calculus modules in Higher Education (HE).This short study assesses how students perceive the importance of calculus across disciplines including Mathematics, Electronic Engineering, Economics and Business.Specifically, we consider the following:  1)         Are there differences in how students from different disciplines perceive the importance of studying calculus? 2)         Do students view the field of calculus as: something to be learned to pass their course; something to be fully understood; or a tool for future study/career? Whilst this small study cannot answer these important, open questions, overall it does reveal that students in Mathematics and Economics have similar perceptions about calculus, whereas, Business students viewed calculus significantly differently to the other disciplines.  Therefore, these results give some initial indications of appropriate groupings for cross teaching calculus, and importantly give an area of focus for which further research should develop, regarding how these grouping would affect attainment, pass rates and other phenomena noted in HE calculus module

Capacity Building in Mathematics and Statistics Learning Support in Norway and the Czech Republic (MSLS Net)

This report describes the final meeting of the project "Capacity Building in Mathematics and Statistics Learning Support in Norway and the Czech Republic (MSLS Net)" held at the Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Czech Republic (June 12-14, 2023). Provision of mathematics and statistics learning support (MSLS) is developing rapidly in many parts of the world and activity in Norway and the Czech Republic has been accelerated significantly through this EEA Grants funded project. Representatives of each of the five partner institutions worked on creating a summary of good practices in tutor training, designing learning resources, and in delivering, monitoring and evaluation of mathematics and statistics support. Provision varied considerably across the institutions and the centres represented demonstrated diverse and innovative ways in which mathematics support is evolving. Outputs from the project include a Handbook on good practice and a booklet concerned with mathematics support centre tutor training, including pedagogic training and learning resources for the development of the tutors as described below. Finally, consideration turned to the value of establishing a professional network to continue this important work. The report will be relevant to other international groups interested in working in university level mathematics and statistics support

Front Matter

Table of contents et

A level Mathematics (England) grade distributions and grade boundaries 2019-2023

This article sets in context the A level Mathematics qualifications (in England) awarded in Summer 2023 with those awarded in 2019-2022, along with year-on-year overall comparisons of grade profiles, and year-on-year comparisons of grade boundaries and grade profiles for each of the four A level Specifications: Pearson/Edexcel, AQA, OCR A and OCR B (MEI)

Editorial

Editoria

Improving engagement in large undergraduate statistics tutorial classes

We investigate whether introducing the mobile polling system Poll Everywhere had a positive impact on student engagement in large tutorial classes of a second year undergraduate statistics module. In particular, a short quiz facilitated by Poll Everywhere was introduced at the beginning of the tutorial in order to promote active participation. Students’ perceptions of the Poll Everywhere quiz on their tutorial engagement and learning are also explored. We conclude that the Poll Everywhere quiz seemed to have improved student engagement in tutorials and that students believed that it made tutorials engaging and was useful for their learning