UQ Maths Teaching Seminar
What first-year students know
and what this means for us
Michael Jennings
Thursday 11 September 2008 3:00pm
69-706
All welcome!
Abstract: In recent years there has been a noticeable increase
in the diversity of backgrounds, abilities and aspirations of
students entering mathematics courses at UQ. For the past two years,
UQ maths academics have investigated first-year students’ abilities
via a quiz administered in their first lecture of semester.
Questions covered both junior (Years 1-10) and senior (Years 11-12)
mathematics content, and involved purely mathematical calculations
as well as worded real-life problems. The first group of students
was studying a specialist mathematics bridging course, MATH1050;
the second had completed the equivalent specialist mathematics
subject at high school (Maths C) and were studying a first-year
mathematics course, MATH1051.
The results suggested the topics most recently studied, in this case, differentiation and
integration, appear not to have been strongly integrated into students’ conceptual networks
or schemas. The results also suggested that students even have difficulty with topics they
first experienced in primary school. The high percentages of “can’t remember” responses in
the quizzes indicate that students have seen the questions before; however, either cannot
remember how to do them or do not feel confident in attempting them.
The session will provide an opportunity for people to look at the data from the studies,
discuss what understanding of mathematics is important for high school graduates to bring
to their university studies, and identify issues in bridging between secondary and tertiary
mathematics.
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http://www.maths.uq.edu.au/mathsed
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