CONTEXT Students of scientific and economics subjects (more specifically engineering and Economics) at higher education level often lack the basic maths skills to effectively follow their lectures. It is therefore necessary to identify these gaps and to give Maths teachers the sources to provide their students with the necessary skills and competences that they lack. OBJECTIVE The main goal of MathE - Improve Math skills in higher Education is to encourage training and exchange in order to enhance the quality of teaching and, in particular, to support the use of digital technologies and online delivery to improve pedagogies and assessment methods, as well setting up transnational teacher training courses and strengthening cooperation between teacher training universities. The specific objectives are: - To facilitate the identification of students' gaps in the knowledge of maths to effectively attend their higher education courses - To provide Math teachers with the necessary teaching sources so that they can help their students to overcome existing gaps - To enhance a transnational sharing of teaching sources, tools and strategies in the field of Mathematics teaching and learning at higher education level ACTIVITIES The MathE project will make a significant contribution to innovation in maths teaching at higher education level by developing, implementing and testing: - Assessment tools so as to identify the areas where the students' maths entry skills need to be improved. - an Online Math Library which will be available to students and teachers of higher education institutions to provide them with video based teaching and learning sources to reinforce specific mathematical topics. - A Community of Practice allowing Maths teachers in higher education institutions to share and compare teaching sources, tools and strategies IMPACT From the student’s perspective, MathE project will promote: - An increase in students’ engagement, motivation and sense of being challenged; - Digital educational resources that can be used as a work tool, individually or as team work, to increase mathematical knowledge. From the teacher’s perspective, MathE project will promote: - Motivation and the sense of challenge; - Digital educational tools for the classroom; - Resources for the evaluation of the progress of the students’ knowledge, that can be used as assessment of the math course unit of some engineering/business course; - evaluation and assessment tools - Possibilities of discussion among teachers and researchers about good practices in math teaching
At the end of the project, including 6 extra months due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the MathE Project is completed, all project activities have been carried out and the expected results have been achieved and exceeded. The results are available on the project portal at https://mathe.pixel-online.org. Some section are password protected, but the registration is free of charge and allows to have complete access to all the portal resources. In order to provide the Portuguese National Agency with a complete access, an account has been created: - Username: [email protected] - Password: Erasmus2018 This username must be used in the login area over the top menu. CONTEXT The project has been designed based on the fact that students of scientific and economics subjects at higher education level often lack the basic math skills to effectively follow their lectures. OBJECTIVE The objective of the MathE project is to enhance the quality of teaching and improve pedagogies and assessment methods by: - Facilitating the identification of students’ gaps in Math - Providing Math teachers with appropriate digital sources - Enhancing transnational sharing of innovative teaching sources PARTICIPANTS The main target groups of the project are: - Math Lecturers - Math Students Currently a total number of 41 institutions, 79 lecturers, and 954 students registered on the platform. ACTIVITIES The activities for the production of intellectual outputs, as it was planned, have been organised into phases with related expected results. Phase 1 – Students’ Assessment Toolkit This phase is devoted to identifying the areas where the math students' entry skills need to be improved. It foresees a section for the students to self-assess their knowledge and a section where lecturers can prepare and administer final tests to assess students’ knowledge. Project partners identified 15 math topics and 18 subtopics. For each topic, a number of questions was proposed, examined and finally validated both for the self and for the final assessment. The current database of questions includes: - for the self-assessment, more than 1.100 questions (https://mathe.pixel-online.org/STAS_SNA.php) - for the final assessment almost 500 questions (https://mathe.pixel-online.org/STAS_FA.php) Both database are still growing as lecturers from several universities outside the contractual partners are currently using and enriching it. Phase 2 – Online Math Library This phase is dedicated to the creation of a section to offer students and teachers of higher education institutions video-based teaching and learning sources to reinforce specific mathematical topics. Two specific sections of the project portal are available on the project portal for the: - video lessons and reviews (https://mathe.pixel-online.org/MALI_VC.php) where a total number of 168 reviews of existing videos and 60 new video lessons are available - teaching material (https://mathe.pixel-online.org/MALI_TM.php) where a total number of 198 documents are available. The video lessons and reviews are also suggested to the students after the self-assessment in case of wrong answers. Both databases are still growing as lecturers from several universities inside and outside the contractual partners keep on uploading useful learning materials. Phase 3 – Community of Practice This phase is dedicated to the creation of 2 communities of practice allowing: - Math lecturers in higher education institutions to share and compare teaching sources, tools and strategies (https://teacher-mathe.pixel-online.org/) - math university students to discuss issues and challenges related to math topics (https://student-mathe.pixel-online.org/) Both communities are available and used by the registered users of the MathE portal. Phase 4 - Testing All deliverables have been tested with the representatives of the target groups with very positive feedback. Phase 5 - Multiplier events Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a reduced number of multiplier events have been organized to disseminate the project results. Phase 6 – Training Activity A training activity has been organised online involving representatives from the contractual partners. IMPACT The project is having a wide impact not only on the lecturer and students of the contractual partners but also on those belonging to all the organizations that registered on the MathE platform. Lecturers are contributing to the creation of the contents of the intellectual outputs and are participating in the virtual communities having, therefore, the possibility to support students’ preparation for the final exams. Lecturers also could develop their final tests selecting the students to take part in them and immediately get the results of the tests. Students benefit from: - The possibility to self-assess their knowledge - Get immediate suggestions on how to fill the gaps in the topic they are not confident with - Participate in the students’ community