A presentation from the STEM Annual Conference 2014.
Kingston University recently revised its “Academic Framework” moving from 15 to 30 credit modules with an emphasis on increasing formative assessment and enhancing the Personal Tutor system. Here we report on an approach developed by the School of Mathematics to ease the transition into Higher Education by linking the Tutor system to the development and assessment of Group Work skills in a 1st year mathematics module by using poster assignments to foster the development of skills and promote engagement between Tutors and students: Tutors proposed historical mathematical topics suitable for presentation on a poster such as “Edward Lorenz: The Butterfly Effect” students participated in workshops on exploring group working skills and then obtained their poster topics in Tutor Groups with a little motivational background from their Tutor. The posters were assessed in a mass presentation session mostly by the module team on published criteria but also by students themselves who ranked an assigned selection of five posters on three criteria. We will discuss the successes and challenges of the approach and show some results from the assessment of the posters.
