Unite! news

Continuing the successful seed funded project "Freshman Maths Skills and Anxiety Evaluation", this new initiative embarks on a new phase with new partners like KTH Stockholm. Its primary goal is to bridge the gap between higher education expectations and high school curricula by developing a comprehensive teaching toolkit. 

Building on Previous Achievements 

Building on the previous Unite! seed funded project “Freshman Maths Skills and Anxiety Evaluation”, the basis of this follow-up project is a Unite!-wide survey on maths anxiety and its evaluation. 

Additionally, the project partners have built a network of motivated lecturers within the Unite! alliance, which has now been expanded to include KTH and even benefits from the expertise of the MIT in Boston who are very interested to create mathematical playgrounds with code. Now the partners aim to close the gap between Highschool and Higher Education by developing new teaching materials for students and facilitating the exchange of best practices for teachers. 

Key Objectives and Implementation 

The project partners from TU Graz, Wroclaw Tech, ULisboa and KTH want to achieve their aim by establishing a network of motivated lecturers and implementing two main tasks: 

Asking the Students: The upcoming project will assess first-year students' maths skills to identify gaps between high school and university entry, aiming to enhance the onboarding process. 

Asking the Lecturers: Local workshops will be organized with lecturers at Unite! partner universities to share best practices and innovative teaching methods, enhancing the understanding of maths education across Europe. 

The initiative aims to develop a toolkit of best-practice teaching actions to lower barriers for students entering STEM fields and a free, interactive, jointly improved MOOC. 

This MOOC will incorporate story-based and interactive elements and will be translated into all Unite! languages using platforms like imoox.at, part of the European MOOC Consortium (ECM), and will be integrated into the Unite! Metacampus. 

Innovative ideas such as an online mathematical escape room or mathematical minigames are planned to make mathematics more appealing to high school students. The dissemination of those offerings and actions will occur through Unite! dialogues and conferences like the University Festival. The skill assessment outcomes will be published, providing insights into maths readiness for STEM subjects among first-year students and best teaching practices within the Unite! network. 

Long-Term Objectives: 

• Improve maths education for first-year students at all Unite! partner universities by sharing best practices. 

• Lower overall dropout rates among STEM students. 

• Increase the number of students taking exams. 

• Boost the number of first-year students in STEM subjects at partner universities by reducing mental and skill barriers, enhancing the student culture, and transforming anxious learning situations into challenging, puzzle-like experiences.