Increasing Mathematical Attainment in Schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Increasing Mathematical Attainment in Schools

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

It draws on the researched and tested technologies and pedagogical models of previously successful EU co-funded projects (like MAPLE and S4F) and contemporary business development models to provide long term sustainable Open Educational Resources (OER) and services that underpin progression to nationally and internationally accredited qualifications in Mathematics at Level 1, 2 and 3 of the European Qualifications Framework.

IMAS objectives are:
To provide teachers with a statistics data tool for automating progress measures of mathematical learning progress, reducing time spent on administration and transferring it to teaching informed by empirical data from testing.
To raise levels of digital literacy in schools in order to make people more self-sufficient in their use of technology and less dependent on formal retraining every time there is a shift in the technological ecosystem.
To develop a strategy to support the development of Open Education Resources, including free services founded in a sustainable business model that is self-sustaining.
To gather empirical evidence of what children know and can do in mathematics in order to feedback to and develop the curriculum based on direct evidence.
To provide a teaching resource showcasing best practice in Mathematical teaching including schemes of work, lesson plans and other resources.

The project partners are from ES, NL, BE, CY, IE. They represent mainly small business enterprises and two universities. They have a wealth of technical and pedagogical expertise and share a collective enthusiasm for practical methods of reducing costs and improving efficiency through the use of free software, OERs and free services supported by a contemporary “freemium” business model.

The main results of the project are

An Statistical Analysis Gathering system to be able to draw the evolution of Maths learning in schools at levels EQF 1, 2 and 3. A taxonomy of Maths knowledge will be developed to categorize the 24 questionnaires developed in all the project languages to run the Baseline tests (BLT). The technical environment to run the BLT is moodle.
Performing the Statistical Analysis of the “big data”. This means collecting the data running BLTs; organize the results to be analyse; and create reports to show the results and conclusions, and aggregated results showing national and European results
Create a repository with maths resources categorized using the taxonomy developed. There are two types of OERs in it. 600 resources available in Internet, and 30 interactive resources developed by the project in HTML5 and SCORM format using Storyline 360. The areas of the resources to include will come from the results of the BLTs.
Dealing with the Pedagogical Strategy of teaching maths, and totally related with teachers, the project creates a guidance system to select resources (from the repository) to use with their students depending on the results on the BLT related with their levels and with the areas they need to work more deeply. They will also have a In-service e-training programme to learn which active methodologies they can use to teach maths and how
Finally, there will be a project eLearning Platform which will be used by all the other results, and where all those results will be available, with a Creative Commons licence, to be used during and after the project is finished

So in this project the focus is on the integration of new pedagogical methods, technical infrastructure and business methods associated with the contemporary internet disruptive innovation and evidence based pedagogy. Statistic data provides very clear opportunities to contextualise improved learning through empirical research and we have a proven method of doing this that can scale at low cost to every country in Europe. Activities are focused on collecting evidence from testing what children know and understand about maths before and after formal teaching. In order to take this beyond simple empirical data collection on a large scale we will provide the support and infrastructure for free to enable learning and hence improvement in knowledge, understanding and skills. There will be progression routes for students to gain new qualifications, nationally accredited, directly referenced to levels in the EQF, and supporting ECVET and EQARF principles. The associated training and guidance for teachers will have a multiplying effect and can be extended to all STEM subjects.

The project management is based on the principles of Prince2. The pedagogical method is assessment based on learning outcomes and competence based criteria supported by comprehensive open source collaborative technologies running in the Cloud. This is complemented by online exams to provide grading. All are OERs and provided with free Creative Commons licence.

Project Website

http://imas-project.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 258844 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD DE MALAGA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• CENTRE FOR ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY LTD-CARDET
• JAITEK TECNOLOGÍA Y FORMACIÓN SL
• Stichting Kenniscentrum Pro Work
• ARTEVELDEHOGESCHOOL
• FUTURE IN PERSPECTIVE LIMITED