Appendix B - Final Progress Report Template v1
This template should be used as the basis of your final progress report and Section 1 should cover all Project activities/Milestones/Objectives
since the interim progress report to the Wales Spoke, National HE STEM Programme. You may wish to include web links to resources and/or
news when reporting on the current position of your project. Section 2 Outputs/Outcomes/Impacts is designed to capture the evidence of the
evaluation and the impact of your project but not all sections may be relevant to you. If you have any questions please see section “5. Who to
contact”.
Final Progress Report Template Section 1: Activities/Milestones/Objectives
Project
Activities/Milestones/Objectives
The starting position or baseline
Current Position
Given the nature of the majority of the intake
of the awards in the School of Science & Sport
(i.e. often students with relatively weak, grade
C or D, A level maths), the baseline position
was of a relatively weak maths background.
During the ~5 months that students were engaged with this project,
maths support in the form of 1-to-1 sessions or small group tutorials
has been provided in 3 subject areas:
Objective:
We proposed to offer a maths drop-in
service for students in the School of Sport
and Science at Glamorgan, using
postgraduate students to offer subjectspecific support wherever possible.
The original proposal focused only on the
new BSc Observational Astronomy award,
but was subsequently expanded to include
students from two other divisions within
HESAS - Police Science and
Forensics/Chemistry.
1)
2)
3)
Astronomy (1st and 2nd years)
Police Science (1st and 2nd years; 3rd year project)
Forensics/Chemistry (Foundation and 1st years)
This support has comprised of a mixture of small group tutorials
(typically 3-6 students) and 1-to-1 individual support sessions. These
were arranged as a simple “drop-in” facility or (in the majority of
cases) by prior arrangement.
Delivery has been by 3 PhD students (1 in each subject area), with
overall co-ordination undertaken by one of them (F. Lewis,
Astronomy). Lewis obtained his PhD during the course of the
project, and has been the project manager as well as the maths
tutor for the astronomy students.
The maths topics covered have focussed on subject-specific issues
but have also covered software packages used by the students
whilst dealing with mathematical data and problems (e.g. Excel,
SPSS).
Subject report: Astronomy
(Fraser Lewis)
The target market is 26 x 1st year and 14 x 2nd Maths Help has been running for Astronomy students since January
year students on BSc Observational
2012 - I have run 12 sessions so far with 6 separate students (7 x 2nd
Astronomy - the 2nd years in particular have a years, 5 x 1st years).
range of maths backgrounds and IT skill levels.
During the teaching term period (roughly JanMar, and May for exams), maths tutorial
sessions took place on:
Jan. 10(2hr), 25(2).
Feb. 1(1hr), 8(2).
March 6(1hr), 12(1), 19(1), 20(2).
Topics covered include the manipulation of equations, logarithms,
manipulating numbers and plotting graphs in Excel and the use of
scientific notation and significant figures. Students have been
emailed and told in lectures of this service and are now also
provided with a one hour maths tutorial each week, taking on topics
relevant to the material the students are covering. Demand so far
has come after lectures with new maths or notation in them and in
the run up to a project deadline. A common theme has been the lack
of ability in Excel, not just in mature students but in those who have
recently left school and might have been expected to have greater IT
skills.
The key issues encountered were


Ensuring students turn up as agreed.
Making students aware that it is not just remedial maths but
is equally suitable for good students who are wanting to
improve their grades.
In terms of legacy for Astronomy, we now know some of the
common themes (i.e. training in Excel), we are developing resources
that will be used for future years and published online. We will also
have maths tests early on for our first years in order to establish
their level and make provision for giving help to those that need it
most.
Subject report: Police Sciences
(James Gravelle)
Training and advice has been offered to all
police sciences undergraduate students,
including years 1, 2, 3 and Foundation level.
Ultimately, this maths provision has been
available to over 300 students. This provision
has been formally timetabled by the university
timetabling department for each of the year
groups, thus formalising the provision of
mathematics support within the division of
police sciences.
During the teaching term period (Jan-Mar),
maths tutorial sessions took place on:
Jan. 27(1hr).
Feb. 1 (1hr), 2(1), 8(3), 10(1), 15(2), 16(1),
22(2), 23(2).
March 13(1hr), 14(1), 16(1), 20(1), 23(1),
26(1), 28(2), 29(1), 30(1).
JG was working away in April/May, so no
sessions took place after the spring term
ended (30/3/12).
Up until now, the main area covered has been in mathematics /
statistics software including SPSS and excel. Work has included
looking at p values, standard deviation, averages and cross
tabulation by variables. This provision has also focused on the
presentation of data, including table and graph design.
In addition, third year students have been completing their
dissertations as part of their degree and advice on mathematics has
been offered to them. Much of the work / provision have been
focused on final year students as they work on their results and
findings section as part of their final dissertation projects. This has
resulted in many enquires regarding SPSS, hence the reason for
producing a guild aimed at police students. Advertising has been
done though ‘Blackboard’ and each year tutor. In addition, through
the technology available via blackboard, e-mails have been sent to
each student. This term leading to Easter as they prepare for the
final version of their dissertations to be submitted has proved to be
busy.
There have been few problems encountered during the course of
the training. As the provision has covered a significant number of
students, it was identified early on that each of the four year groups
must been assigned a specific time slot in which provision could be
offered. This has proved to work very well.
We will be working on a statistic guide for Police Sciences students
which will cover the basic skills needed to work on SPSS. It is
anticipated that this will enable them to use basic functions and
applications within the program.
Subject report: Forensics/Chemistry
(Amie Noone)
Support Forensics/Chemistry was specifically
targeted at foundation year students, and 1st
years who study Forensic science due to the
numbers.
I come into contact with half the foundation
year, around 40 students, so I think my
blackboard notice would have reached double
this across .
In terms of numbers, there ~60 x 1st years,
studying Forensics/Chemistry and ~80 on the
Foundation year (which primarily combines
Biology and Forensics/Chemistry students) , so
the maths tutorials would have benefitted a
reasonably large proportion of this group.
Sessions took place on:
March 15(3hr), 22(4), 26(4).
A couple of group sessions have been run with first year students in
the run up to coursework deadlines. This was for first year statistics
coursework, which included - means, medians, modes, variance and
standard deviation, cumulative frequency, Quartiles and
interquartile range; Probability - factorials, permutations,
combinations; probability; binomial distribution; Poisson
distribution; normal distribution.
I have also had a few (4) 1:1 sessions with a first year students and
have covered probability, the normal distribution, and z-tests before
her end of term exam. I want to continue after Easter with some
examination preparation for some of the maths based areas in the
chemistry modules, have also had 2 responses from foundation year
students about help in the lead up to exams. This has been in
response to a notice posted on Blackboard. I have also offered up
help verbally at the end of my classes (first and foundation year),
and also when chatting to students if I hear they're struggling with
something suggested meeting.
The mains topics I have been asked about relate to probability and
statistics, but I see more chemistry related queries coming in after
Easter as there's a shift in focus from Maths tests/coursework to
exams.
A thing that I've found from the 1:1 work and that I think is
important just from the comments I've heard students make, is
being able to interpret questions and pick out the data they need to
complete the calculation, i.e. interpreting 'wordy' questions. This has
arisen in statistics and chemistry when a practical situation is
described, I have notice confusion is picking out the relevant
information. The only fix to this has been to help them construct a
summary, write out the necessary equations and get them to stick it
all back together!
Demand has come from those who haven't done
mathematics/chemistry A-level and need longer to work on topics
they learn in class.
Final Progress Report Template Section 2: Outputs/Outcomes/Impacts
Areas of anticipated
impact
Examples of key performance
indicators
Evidence of impact for your project
Within HESAS, 3 separate divisions were engaged in this project:
i)
Earth, Space & Environment (Lewis)
ii) Police Science (Gravelle)
iii) Forensics and Chemistry (Noone)
Building partnerships
We aimed to develop some inter-divisional
contacts with the faculty (HESAS), but also
benefit from contacts with external bodies
who had been working with HE-STEM Wales
on similar projects.
Externally, participants attended sessions at:
i)
Cardiff Uni (Lewis, Gravelle; Nov. 8th 2011)
ii) Cardiff Uni (Lewis; May 30th)
iii) Millennium Centre/Sennedd (Lewis; June 13th)
iv) Cardiff Uni (Lewis; June 22nd)
v) Sheffield Uni (Lewis, July 12/13th)
In addition, Lewis was meant to attend a meeting in Llandridod Wells on Feb. 29th,
but was forced to cancel due to illness. The Project Officer (R. Griffiths) visited
Glamorgan Uni. on March 8th.
Sustainability
We viewed this project as a pilot study, to
assess the demand for targeted (subjectspecific) maths support within HESAS. We
wanted to try a variety of approaches,
included drop-in sessions, pre-arranged
meetings, small-group tutorials and online
support.
1-to-1 tutorials: The tutorial aspects of the project were mainly focussed into the
spring teaching term, which spanned Jan/Feb/March 2012 (12 weeks). There was
little contact with students after the Easter vacation, as they were almost
immediately into exams (due to the very long preceding terms, both of which were
12 weeks long). Several drop-in sessions were not attended by any students, and it
was felt that a more effective use of staff time was by (i) prior arrangement with
students and (ii) development of “self-taught” resources that would be placed on
Blackboard, and be useful in the future.
Small group tutorials: One of the very positive “legacy” issues from this project has
been the establishment of strong links with the maths support team within LCSS
(Learning Support and Student Services). This small team has been able to offer
small group tutorials to the astronomy student, following discussions between
Roche, Lewis and maths tutor Mike Davies. These small group sessions ran all
term, and were typically attended by 6-8 x 1st year students.
Unfortunately, due to the current financial situation and a consequent lack of
funds for staffing costs, there is no prospect of money being made available to
support such activities in the future. Consequently, the legacy aspect of the project
will focus on the use of “self taught” materials that will be placed on the
BlackBoard VLE, either directly associated with specific modules or as a generic
“Maths Support” section.
Transferability
It is planned that the pilot study carried out
here will be presented to the HESAS Teaching
and Learning panel at the autumn term
meeting as a case study.
Within the faculty (HESAS), there is no subject-specific maths support, which was
the main motivation for this pilot study. There is some generic maths support
available through the Learning Centre and Student Support (LCSS), but this is
arranged by the students directly with a tutor, with no interaction with the award
tutors etc.
The feedback from the students has been excellent, with most feeling that they
needed/wanted more of this sort of subject-specific support, provided by
postgraduate-level staff in their particular discipline. Anecdotal comments suggest
that the slightly less formal nature of the sessions was seen to be a good thing (i.e.
the postgrads were more approachable in an informal setting), although
recruitment to attend sessions was still difficult.
One clear lesson from the pilot was that more needs to be done to assess the
students in the very first few weeks after they arrive. Within astronomy, the
students were told about the drop-in sessions and some were actively encouraged
to attend, based on their own comments about issues they were having with
maths. However, attendance was still sporadic, even for some of those we would
perceive as being most in need of support. In future, we will be carrying out a
“skills audit” in the first week of term, with maths and science (mainly physics)
questions ranging from basic to GCSE to A level, to try and identify early-on where
we may have students who will struggle.
Employer engagement
There was no maths support programme in
operation within HESAS prior to this project
starting. This pilot programme seeks to
establish that there is a need for subjectspecific maths support, and also to create a
baseline set of supporting materials that will
serve as the legacy of this project, providing a
degree of “self taught” provision via the
BlackBoard system.
We were very fortunate to be able to add extra maths provision from LCSS (see
“Sustainability” and “Widening Participation” for more details) in the form of
weekly small-group tutorial for the BSc Observational Astronomy 1st year students.
Timetabling restrictions and staff availability meant that, unfortunately, this could
not be extended to the other 2 subject areas in this academic year, but we are in
discussion about providing some level of ongoing support in 2012-13 (as this is
simply a targeting of existing resources, and a more efficient use of available tutor
time – so no additional expenditure is required).
Within Science & Sport (our department with the HESAS faculty), our maths
support programme has been noted in termly staff meetings as an example of
good practise, and I have spoken to the Centre for Excellence in Learning and
Teaching (CELT) about a future funding bid to expand the pilot programme, both to
extend the support within the 3 existing divisions but also to add new subject
areas (biology, geology, geography).
Widening participation
We wished to ascertain which topics within
the 3 subject areas were the ones causing
most concern to students in their first (or
Foundation) year of study.
We also wanted to see whether we could
utilise other sources of maths support,
whether internally (e.g. from the Faculty of
Advanced Technology, where the Maths
department resides) or externally (e.g.
through the wider HE-STEM Wales network
engaged with maths support, or nationally
through the HEA and HE-STEM programmes).
Impact on institutions
There was previously no such subject-specific
maths support available to students within
HESAS at the University of Glamorgan. It was
hoped that this pilot study could establish
both the level of need and the resources to
address the provision of math support in the
particular subject areas involved.
LCSS engagement: Whilst not funded by this project (as LCSS had agreed to provide
tutor support for free), the resources developed (for BlackBoard) and the fact that
LCSS are happy to repeat the sessions each year means that we have now
established a support service for our students in their 1st year, which is probably
the most critical in terms of getting all students up to a similar proficiency level.
More widely, this project has clearly identified a number of key areas with the 3
divisions that were seen as “repeat offenders” in the sense that several students
came to sessions asking for support on the same issues. This resulted in more
small-group sessions being organised (to avoid too much repletion of teaching),
and online resources being compiled to support these particular areas.
The 3 postgrads involved in this project were already engaged in undergraduate
teaching at various levels (Noone as a chemistry lab demonstrator; Gravelle and
Lewis as hourly paid lecturers on various courses within their divisions), but had
not previously been involved in maths support. They have all been involved in
developing new resources for use in the longer-term by HESAS students in their
respective disciplines, and have contributed to the legacy aspects of the project.
In particular, Lewis has been gathering a variety of maths support resources
following his attendance at several HE-STEM courses and workshops. He has
adapted some of these to directly focus on the astronomy students, and spent
much of June developing these new resources for use in future years. A review of
1st year physics and maths provision on the astronomy award will take place in
early September, and these resources will be included within that process.