ÂÒÂ×Ðã

Case study by Manuela Sadik

What was the aim of your project?

The project aimed to improve provision in taught postgraduate programmes, specifically in relation to academic skills development e.g. reading and writing critically. The project team evaluated current provision, drawing on student experience, to investigate how academic skills development can be improved in Understanding Mathematics Education (UME), the core module of the MA Mathematic Education programme. 

We focused on identifying recommendations in two ways: 

1. Direct improvements to provision through formative task development 
2. Improving skill development indirectly, e.g. how best to raise student awareness of provision embedded in taught module sessions.

What did you do?

We collected data on students’ perceptions of academic support provided in the UME module via a Moodle survey, with approximately half the 2017 cohort responding. The survey suggested that whilst the support provided in the module was good, there was room for improvement. Students were able to identify specific ways in which formative tasks had supported their academic skill development. However, comments about taught-sessions were more often content-focussed rather than in relation to academic skill development. Where specific examples were given, they tended to be linked to taught-sessions where the focus on skill development was more explicit. These initial findings suggested we should be more explicit about the support we provide for academic skill development, particularly in taught-sessions. 

The survey findings raised issues which we probed further in our subsequent focus-group interviews with UME students. We conducted two focus-group interviews, one with full-time students and one with part-time students. The focus-groups were successful in highlighting both similarities and differences between full-time and part-time students and allowing us to explore issues with academic skill development in more depth. 

What were the main successes of the project?

Our main successes were in invigorating staff-student collaboration by working together as a project team and by disseminating our findings to improve our shared experience of working and studying at ÂÒÂ×Ðã. We built excellent, mutually beneficial relationships between staff and students through working together as a project team – we learned a lot from each other! We presented our findings at the IOE Mathematics Education Significant Interest Group, creating a lively discussion and leading to the UME tutor team agreeing actions to improve academic skill development for implementation next year. Our project achieved recognition with our entry winning runners-up prize in the ChangeMakers Student Poster competition and being nominated in the Students Choice Teaching Awards for Active Student Partnership. Similarly, the quality of our student-staff collaboration was recognised in feedback on our presentations at the Departmental Teaching Committee and ÂÒÂ×Ðã Education conference.

What difficulties did you face during your project? What would you do differently?

Originally, we were planning to probe student perceptions from the previous UME 2016 cohort but this proved impossible as students had moved on. Luckily we did have access to module feedback from 2016 which we used to inform the project. We had also planned to run face-to-face focus groups with part-time UME students. This proved to be a non-starter as snow and industrial action added to the difficulties of finding a date and time that worked for students with full-time jobs. An online focus group using Zoom conferencing tools was much more successful.

If we were to run the project again we would work harder to engage part-time students, learning from what worked this time. The UME module runs in the autumn term. We applied for and secured ChangeMakers funding in the middle of the autumn term. This was just-in-time for our exploratory study but, on reflection, building more time into the project through a summer application would have allowed us greater flexibility e.g. to work with part-time students.

What impact has your project had? On whom?

We think our project will make a difference to future cohorts of UME students and foster a shared understanding amongst UME tutors regarding how to support students in developing academic reading and writing skills. The UME tutor team has agreed the following actions for next year:

1. Reviewing session objectives to develop an understanding of how language is used when describing academic writing to students. This will improve the coherence of such language across the module and thereby help students to understand what makes for good academic writing. 
2. Use our objectives as a pivot during sessions to create opportunities for students to discuss their understanding of the language used to describe academic writing, as appropriate in the session.
3. Tutors have received training to begin making use of ÂÒÂ×Ðã Reading Lists in their sessions as part of the UME module.  
4. Review the reading list for the sessions and provide at least one sentence explaining their choices for each of the essential readings. This will develop the coherence of readings across the module and, through reflection, develop a shared understanding of how and why readings are chosen for students. In doing so, students will  develop their awareness of how to select literature to inform their assignments.

We hope that our project will have wider influence on taught postgraduate (PGT) programmes at ÂÒÂ×Ðã. With the support of the Programme Leader, Cosette Crisan, we expect that the actions agreed by UME tutors will influence other modules in the MA in Mathematics Education. Through disseminating our project at a Department Teaching Committee meeting; the ÂÒÂ×Ðã Education conference; the ChangeMakers Poster competition; and via this case study, we hope our project will make a difference to students and tutors in our department, at faculty-level and across ÂÒÂ×Ðã more widely.