MathE – Improve Math Skills in Higher Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

MathE – Improve Math Skills in Higher Education

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 higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

At the end of the project, including 6 extra months due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the MathE Project is completed, all project activities have been carried out and the expected results have been achieved and exceeded.
The results are available on the project portal at https://mathe.pixel-online.org.

Some section are password protected, but the registration is free of charge and allows to have complete access to all the portal resources. In order to provide the Portuguese National Agency with a complete access, an account has been created:
– Username: mathe.project.2019@gmail.com
– Password: Erasmus2018
This username must be used in the login area over the top menu.

CONTEXT
The project has been designed based on the fact that students of scientific and economics subjects at higher education level often lack the basic math skills to effectively follow their lectures.

OBJECTIVE
The objective of the MathE project is to enhance the quality of teaching and improve pedagogies and assessment methods by:
– Facilitating the identification of students’ gaps in Math
– Providing Math teachers with appropriate digital sources
– Enhancing transnational sharing of innovative teaching sources

PARTICIPANTS
The main target groups of the project are:
– Math Lecturers
– Math Students
Currently a total number of 41 institutions, 79 lecturers, and 954 students registered on the platform.

ACTIVITIES
The activities for the production of intellectual outputs, as it was planned, have been organised into phases with related expected results.

Phase 1 – Students’ Assessment Toolkit
This phase is devoted to identifying the areas where the math students’ entry skills need to be improved. It foresees a section for the students to self-assess their knowledge and a section where lecturers can prepare and administer final tests to assess students’ knowledge.
Project partners identified 15 math topics and 18 subtopics. For each topic, a number of questions was proposed, examined and finally validated both for the self and for the final assessment.
The current database of questions includes:
– for the self-assessment, more than 1.100 questions (https://mathe.pixel-online.org/STAS_SNA.php)
– for the final assessment almost 500 questions (https://mathe.pixel-online.org/STAS_FA.php)
Both database are still growing as lecturers from several universities outside the contractual partners are currently using and enriching it.

Phase 2 – Online Math Library
This phase is dedicated to the creation of a section to offer students and teachers of higher education institutions video-based teaching and learning sources to reinforce specific mathematical topics.
Two specific sections of the project portal are available on the project portal for the:
– video lessons and reviews (https://mathe.pixel-online.org/MALI_VC.php) where a total number of 168 reviews of existing videos and 60 new video lessons are available
– teaching material (https://mathe.pixel-online.org/MALI_TM.php) where a total number of 198 documents are available.
The video lessons and reviews are also suggested to the students after the self-assessment in case of wrong answers. Both databases are still growing as lecturers from several universities inside and outside the contractual partners keep on uploading useful learning materials.

Phase 3 – Community of Practice
This phase is dedicated to the creation of 2 communities of practice allowing:
– Math lecturers in higher education institutions to share and compare teaching sources, tools and strategies (https://teacher-mathe.pixel-online.org/)
– math university students to discuss issues and challenges related to math topics (https://student-mathe.pixel-online.org/)
Both communities are available and used by the registered users of the MathE portal.

Phase 4 – Testing
All deliverables have been tested with the representatives of the target groups with very positive feedback.

Phase 5 – Multiplier events
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a reduced number of multiplier events have been organized to disseminate the project results.

Phase 6 – Training Activity
A training activity has been organised online involving representatives from the contractual partners.

IMPACT
The project is having a wide impact not only on the lecturer and students of the contractual partners but also on those belonging to all the organizations that registered on the MathE platform.
Lecturers are contributing to the creation of the contents of the intellectual outputs and are participating in the virtual communities having, therefore, the possibility to support students’ preparation for the final exams. Lecturers also could develop their final tests selecting the students to take part in them and immediately get the results of the tests.
Students benefit from:
– The possibility to self-assess their knowledge
– Get immediate suggestions on how to fill the gaps in the topic they are not confident with
– Participate in the students’ community

Project Website

https://mathe.pixel-online.org/index.php

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 365237,4 Eur

Project Coordinator

INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DE BRAGANCA & Country: PT

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITATEA TEHNICA GHEORGHE ASACHI DIN IASI
• FUNDATIA EUROED
• KAUNO TECHNOLOGIJOS UNIVERSITETAS
• LIMERICK INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
• PIXEL – ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI GENOVA