HE STEM Projects resources

Statistics Advisory Services (SASs) have recently been established at several UK HE institutions, offering statistics help and advice to students undertaking a final year undergraduate or masters project or engaged in postgraduate research. This report gives the findings of a project to identify the practical and pedagogical issues associated with sharing an on-line SAS resource, and to elicit the opinions of students using the service in order to understand their expectations and experience of using this type of on-line support. We believe that this type of shared service would offer universities a viable alternative means of providing a SAS without incurring the financial costs of resourcing a SAS solely dedicated to their own institution. This report was written by Alun Owen, Peter Samuels, Michele Wrightham, Bernadette Leckenby and Mollie Gilchrist. This report is not made available under a Creative Commons licence but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use.

This booklet details the curriculum resources created by the project 'Being a Professional Mathematician'. This aimed to produce a collection of teaching resources on the development of mathematics - stories from history and more recent development of the discipline. These aimed to counter a view of mathematics as a static, completed body of knowledge and instead encourage awareness of the process of doing mathematics. They aimed to develop students' awareness of the culture of mathematics. This booklet gives details of the material created and discusses how this material may be used in the curriculum. This booklet was written by Tony Mann and Chris Good. This report is not made available under a Creative Commons licence but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use.

This Course Pack offers the resources from a course, titled Communication and Presentation Skills, which sought to teach students how to present numerate information, at an appropriate level, to various kinds of audience. The course sought to develop five key skills in particular: the communication of ideas through speech; the vocal skills needed to speak effectively; the verbal description of quantitative data; the oral interpretation of diagrams and graphs; and, engagement with the audience. The sessions involved active participation by the students, with teamwork an essential element. The materials for the Communication and Presentation Skills course were devised, written and delivered by Eileen Cunningham, Lesley Harper, Shamim Khan, Hendryk Korzeniowski, Gordon Blower and James Groves This resource is free for educational use at UK universities. It is not made available under a Creative Commons licence but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use.

It is important to take account of the needs of employers when developing graduate mathematicians. Some of the projects reported in this booklet have worked with employers, employees or professional bodies to develop research findings, good practice advice and curriculum resources to improve graduate skills. Others offer examples of approaches involving employers in delivery of teaching and assessment for work-related learning, and various models that can be used to place students within organisations for work-based learning. This report was edited by Jeff Waldock and Peter Rowlett. This report is not made available under a Creative Commons licence but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use.

Courses with substantial mathematical content pose specific accessibility challenges beyond those usually considered in generic inclusive curricula good practice advice. This guide draws on knowledge and experience from academic staff, professional support staff, disability researchers and students. Contributions explore technical and pedagogic barriers and the way these may be formed by the modes in which mathematics is communicated. The contributions provide strong evidence of the need for collaboration between the MSOR community and the support professionals in dissolving barriers and moving together towards the goal of inclusive curricula. This report was edited by Emma Cliffe and Peter Rowlett. This report is not made available under a Creative Commons licence but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use.

The HE Mathematics Curriculum Summit on 12 January 2011 brought together representatives of half of the mathematical sciences departments in England and Wales and the professional bodies for a day of debate and discussion on the state of HE mathematics course design and delivery. This report gives summaries of the debate, talks and discussions as well as a series of recommendations of current priorities for curriculum development in mathematical sciences. This report was edited by Peter Rowlett. This report is not made available under a Creative Commons licence but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use.

The IPSHE curriculum project aims to encourage a teaching methodology based on solving practical problems arising in industry and science. This wiki maintains a growing list of case studies from real, recent industrial and scientific research problems serving as a basis for group projects at all levels of undergraduate study. This website is not made available under a Creative Commons licence but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use.

An innovative and sustainable online bank of starting points for problem- solving, presented in an interactive, visual and engaging way that will nurture mathematical thinking, logical processes and modelling. The starting points will permit a range of teaching approaches - individual, small group and whole class. They will be fully functional on a range of digital technologies including handhelds. These resources were created by the project Problem Solving in Undergraduate Mathematics (PSUM) and are available via Nrich. This website is not made available under a Creative Commons licence but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use.

This book discusses the outcomes of the MU-MAP Project (Mapping University Mathematics Assessment Practices) aimed at detailing the current state of assessment practices in undergraduate mathematics including: A survey of existing practices at universities across England and Wales; A summary of the research literature; Examples of different forms of mathematics assessment in current use; Reports on the implementation of changed assessment projects such as oral assessment, the use of applied comparative judgement techniques and assessing employability skills. This book was edited by Paola Iannone Adrian Simpson. This work is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence.

The Maths Arcade is an innovative activity involving playing and analysing strategy games which aims to simultaneously support struggling learners, stretch more confident learners and encourage the development of a staff-student mathematical community. This booklet contains details of the original Maths Arcade at Greenwich, including some discussion of the advantages of running an Arcade, and case studies from seven other Maths Arcades since established at Manchester, Salford, Sheffield Hallam, Leicester, Bath, Nottingham and Keele. This report was edited by Noel-Ann Bradshaw and Peter Rowlett. This report is not made available under a Creative Commons licence but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use.

A series of workshops on creating and using media to enhance your teaching took place. Videos are available of some of the workshop sessions. These videos are not made available under a Creative Commons licence but are freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use.

This project explored methods to produce flexible and accessible learning resources for mathematics with a focus on producing a guide for staff in higher education to enable them as individuals to create flexible resources efficiently and robustly. This website houses resources providing an overview of the challenge, guidelines to writing documents and details of software setup; the resources act as exemplars for flexible and accessible learning resources for mathematics. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The projects highlighted in this booklet have as their key concern the student and have introduced initiatives which recognise the diverse needs of students. All have some element of support tailored to the needs of students, although the projects themselves are quite distinct. The first is focused on supporting mathematics students and the next three focus on student-centred approaches for students from other disciplines. The focus then changes, with three reports on inclusive curricula and students with additional needs. The final report presents an overview of how one might use social media to engage students. This report was edited by Carol Robinson. This report is not made available under a Creative Commons licence but is freely available to UK universities for non-commerical educational use.

The purpose of this Guide is to argue the case for putting problem-solving at the heart of a mathematics degree; for giving students a flavour, according to their capabilities, of what it is to be a mathematician; a taste for rising to a mathematical challenge and overcoming it. Its purpose is also to make it easier for colleagues who share our vision to find ways of realising it in their own teaching. This book was edited by Matthew Badger, Chris Sangwin and Trevor Hawkes. This document is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives (CC BY-ND) license.