Mathematics & Statistics Colloquium - Claire Mullen, University College Dublin

Wednesday, March 24, 2021 - 16:00
MS Teams

Title: Mathematics Support in the time of COVID-19

Speaker: Claire Mullen, University College Dublin

The talks will be held virtually this semester via Microsoft Teams. Link to join the meeting is given below.  All are welcome.
TO JOIN CLICK: Join Microsoft Teams Meeting

NOTE TIME CHANGE TO 4PM

ABSTRACT:
The dramatic and swift changes brought on by COVID-19, in particular the move to fully online modes of teaching and learning for mathematics and statistics support (MSS), have presented students and tutors with a host of new opportunities for thinking and working. We, at the Mathematics Support Centre at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland, and the Mathematics Education Support Hub at Western Sydney University (WSU), Australia, conducted a study aiming to gain insight from both MSS student users and tutors about their experience of wholly online learning and teaching in the COVID-19 era with particular emphasis on support. The study represents a ‘perspectives’ study, the idea being that before we examine specific aspects of this experience, it would be best to know what the issues are.  Employing a qualitative analysis framework of 23 one-on-one interviews with tutors and students from both institutions in Australia and Ireland, we identified five key themes as central to the shared experiences and perspectives of the participants. In this talk I will give some background to previous online mathematics support provision prior to the pandemic in both UCD and WSU. I will then discuss the identified themes in relation to the new normal with the intention of supporting MSS practitioners, researchers and students in the future. The themes are; Usage of online MSS, Mathematics is different, Pedagogical Changes, Social Interactions, and the Future of online MSS.

Image Source - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pure-mathematics-formul%C3%A6-blackboard.jpg