This study aimed to adapt the Get Set2 quiz and design a diagnostic quiz for implementation under assumed knowledge admissions into university science degrees. The GetReady Quiz that was designed, comprised five modules benchmarked against the high school curriculum in Mathematics, Chemistry and Biology. The significance of this study stems from…

The transition from school to university is a challenging process for many students which is reflected in high dropout and low examination success rates during the first year at university. Qualitative studies have found hints that students' beliefs play an important role during the transition. Due to their dialectic nature with cognitive as well…

STEM educators have taken on a new and radically different reality: that students will have access to online tools and online knowledge as they undergo assessment. Students may look up facts that are easily available online, employ online tools and also employ paid services to cheat. The first wave of novel assessment strategies devised in…

We describe the design and evaluation of an innovative course for beginning undergraduate mathematics students. The course is delivered almost entirely online, making extensive use of computer-aided assessment to provide students with practice problems. We outline various ideas from education research that informed the design of the course, and…

Designed for this study as a conceptual framework comprising particular educational approaches and techniques for mathematics teaching and learning, the Successful Mathematics Classroom (SMC) aimed to promote college students' mathematics self-efficacy, motivation, and achievement. Through using a case study methodology, a range of tests and…

First-year undergraduates may be particularly prone to experiencing difficulties with facilitating feelings of relatedness, due to the recent shift in educational environments (i.e. from high school to university), which may be unfamiliar. Therefore, the current study aimed to determine whether the implementation of a single pedagogical strategy,…

In this paper we report on the outcomes of two surveys carried out in higher education institutions of Ireland; one of students attending first-year undergraduate non-specialist mathematics modules and another of their lecturers. The surveys aimed to identify the topics that these students found difficult, whether they had most difficulty with the…

In spite of sustained efforts tertiary institutions implement to try and improve student academic performance, the number of students succeeding in first-year mathematics courses remains disturbingly low. For most students, the gap between their mathematical capability and the competencies they are expected and need to develop to function…

Many approaches to make mathematics relevant to first-year engineering students have been described. These include teaching practical engineering applications, or a close collaboration between engineering and mathematics teaching staff on unit design and teaching. In this paper, we report on a novel approach where we gave higher year engineering…

Studies have shown that at the end of an introductory statistics course, students struggle with building block concepts, such as mean and standard deviation, and rely on procedural understandings of the concepts. This study aims to investigate the understandings entering freshman of a department of mathematics and statistics (including mathematics…

FOIL is a well-known mnemonic that is used to find the product of two binomials. We conduct a large sample (n = 252) observational study of first-year college students and show that while the FOIL procedure leads to the accurate expansion of the product of two binomials for most students who apply it, only half of these students exhibit conceptual…

The art of teaching freshmen students is undergoing a rapid paradigm change. Classical forms of teaching are not applicable any more and an unmanageable offer of new multimedia tools and concepts is glutting the market. Moreover, compared to previous courses, the class size triples. In view of these challenges, we implemented a new teaching…

Mathematics support in higher education has become increasingly widespread over the past two decades, particularly in the UK, Ireland and Australia. Despite this, reliable evaluation of mathematics support continues to present challenges for those working in this area. One reason is because ideally, properly structured support should function as…

Many universities issue mathematical diagnostic tests to incoming first-year students, covering a range of the basic concepts with which they should be comfortable from secondary school. As far as many lecturers are concerned, the purpose of this test is to determine the students' mathematical knowledge on entry. It should also provide an early…

Using a Classroom Response System (CRS) has been associated with positive educational outcomes, by fostering student engagement and by allowing immediate feedback to both students and instructors. This study examined a low-cost CRS (VotApedia) in a large first-year class, where students responded to questions using their mobile phones. This study…