Fostering employability skills through the t-shaped student in science, mathematics and medical science

We report on a case study on how employability skills can be embedded within science, mathematics and medical science students. Our cohort involved two courses and almost 500 first-year students at a large, research-intensive university. The approach was to redesign the curriculum within these courses to form a T-shaped student experience by focusing 50% of class contact time on employability skills and teamwork activities within an active learning space; while the other 50% of time is spent on discipline knowledge. Our results show positive perceptions from students regarding their learning in these courses through: collaboration; active learning engagement; and professional development. We suggest that starting the T-shaped student experience within the first year of university has the benefits of enabling depth and breadth of knowledge to naturally develop throughout the university years, as opposed to a capstone course which endeavours to add these skills at the end

The 13th Southern Hemisphere Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics

Ngā mihi aroha ki ngā tangata katoa and warm greetings to you all. Welcome to Herenga Delta 2021, the Thirteenth Southern Hemisphere Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics. It has been ten years since the Volcanic Delta Conference in Rotorua, and we are excited to have the Delta community return to Aotearoa New Zealand, if not in person, then by virtual means. Although the limits imposed by the pandemic mean that most of this year’s 2021 participants are unable to set foot in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, this has certainly not stopped interest in this event. Participants have been invited to draw on the concept of herenga, in Te Reo Māori usually a mooring place where people from afar come to share their knowledge and experiences. Although many of the participants are still some distance away, the submissions that have been sent in will continue to stimulate discussion on mathematics and statistics undergraduate education in the Delta tradition. The conference invited papers, abstracts and posters, working within the initial themes of Values and Variables. The range of submissions is diverse, and will provide participants with many opportunities to engage, discuss, and network with colleagues across the Delta community. The publications for this thirteenth Delta Conference include publications in the International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, iJMEST, (available at https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/tmes20/collections/Herenga-Delta-2021), the Conference Proceedings, and the Programme (which has created some interesting challenges around time-zones), by the Local Organizing Committee. Papers in the iJMEST issue and the Proceedings were peer reviewed by at least two reviewers per paper. Of the ten submissions to the Proceedings, three were accepted. We are pleased to now be at the business end of the conference and hope that this event will carry on the special atmosphere of the many Deltas which have preceded this one. We hope that you will enjoy this conference, the virtual and social experiences that accompany it, and take the opportunity to contribute to further enhancing mathematics and statistics undergraduate education. Ngā manaakitanga, Phil Kane (The University of Auckland | Waipapa Taumata Rau) on behalf of the Local Organising Committ

Vector Calculus

This is a series of lectures, authored by Chris Tisdell of the University of New South Wales, for MATH2111 "Higher Several Variable Calculus" and "Vector Calculus", which is a 2nd-year mathematics subject taught at UNSW, Sydney. This playlist provides a shapshot of some lectures presented in Session 1, 2009. These lectures focus on presenting vector calculus in an applied and engineering context, while maintaining mathematical rigour. Thus, this playlist may be useful to students of mathematics, but also to those of engineering, physics and the applied sciences. There is an emphasis on examples and also on proofs

How useful are closed captions for learning mathematics via online video?

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