Morten Brekke
morten.brekke@uia.no
University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway
As part of recruiting more students to the engineering program at our university, a sixweek intensive mathematics course (MA-006) is offered every summer for students with university entrance qualifications who lack mathematics and for students with vocational certificates. Students must pass this course to start on a bachelor’s program in engineering.
In addition, they need a second bridging mathematics course (MA-007) that goes in parallel with the ordinary Calculus 1 course (MA-178). MA-006 was set up with pre-recorded short videos and a portfolio of three tests in STACK, with a requirement of a minimum of 60% on all tests to pass. The course is tailored to provide a smooth transition to Calculus 1. MA-006 was offered both as a campus course and as a fully online course. The campus teaching was organized and conducted by three learning assistants. The course focused on independent learning through self-paced study, digital resources, and interactive problem-solving sessions on campus. MA-007 was organized in the same way as MA-006 but with two-hour lectures and four hours of exercise with teaching assistants weekly. With pre-recorded short videos that covers the curriculum I decided to only give lectures if students ask me to do so. To be somewhat prepared, I required students to notify me of topics by 12:00 on the day before the lecture. I also offered to go through material from Calculus MA-178. If there were no requests, I held office hours for questions and assistance in the coffee bar during the scheduled lecture time. Many of the topics was from MA-178 and not from MA007. In this talk I will reflect on my own and my students experience in this course. The overall feedback from students is good (4.2 of 5, five being best). They appreciate freedom of choice, but some would like more „mandatory“ lectures where we generally review topics that have been challenging. I think this email from one of my students sums up why I do it this way:
“Hi! I just wanted to say that I really appreciated what you went through today MA-007! I have struggled to understand the basics of what we are working on in both MA-007 and MA-178, and I know that many of my fellow students have felt the same, especially in MA-178. After today’s lecture, I have a much better understanding of the topics, and it makes it much easier to build up knowledge further. I know that many of my fellow students also appreciated today’s review, and I just wanted to send a thank you for the effort and the way you went through the topics!
Thank you so much! Best regards, XXX”