Blogging from The Tenth Southern Hemisphere Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics

R Nazim Khan – UWA (photo taken from http://www.uwa.edu.au/people/nazim.khan)

See paper: Assessments: an open and closed case.

Looking at the difference between open book exams and closed book exams.

Closed book exams: How much can a student hold in their head. Only demonstrates what students can do with what they’ve memorised.

Open books exams are more like real life.

These ideas don’t have any data in them. There is research about which is ‘better’. Bailie and Toohey: Not clear that open book is really any better.

First year stats level: Can we investigate whether open or closed book leads to different understanding. Observational study:

Univariate statistical methods and some probability with an open book assessment.

Not possible to compare open book assessment with previous years due to other variations.

Because it was open book:

Students had copied down solutions from old tests: Not a good sign.…

Blogging from The Tenth Southern Hemisphere Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics

Anita Campbell – UCT (photo taken from http://uct.academia.edu/AnitaCampbell)

Live blogging: Note that these are notes I’ve taken live, but will edit this today into a more readable format. I want to put this up straight away though to see if I have any obvious misunderstanding. Equations will also be put into more readable format ASAP.

How would you define peer learning?

Poll answers (as asked in the talk):

• Learning through sharing ideas and experience with others with similar levels of expertise
• Students interactions on a problem and thus learning together (not teaching each other but exploring together)
• Letting students combine their knowledge and understanding by teaching each other and problem solving together
• Students learning with each other and from each other
• Exchange of information/critique of peer’s work

Students learning from each other without immediate intervention by a teacher (Boud, Cohen and Simpson 1999(

A bidirectional learning activity that benefits both parties (Keppell et al).…

Blogging from The Tenth Southern Hemisphere Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics

Prof Tim Dunne – UCT (photograph taken from the Elephant Delta website)

Professor Dunne will be discussing the Rasch model, some information of which can be found here. Quoting from wikipedia:
The Rasch model, named after Georg Rasch, is a psychometric model for analyzing categorical data, such as answers to questions on a reading assessment or questionnaire responses, as a function of the trade-off between (a) the respondent’s abilities, attitudes or personality traits and (b) the item difficulty.
Live blogging: Note that these are notes I’ve taken live, but will edit this today into a more readable format. I want to put this up straight away though to see if I have any obvious misunderstanding. Equations will also be put into more readable format ASAP.

David Andrich pioneer of the Rasch method.…