Scholarship Seminar - Short talks on student support initiatives

Dates

Thursday, March 30, 2023 - 14:00 to 15:00

Speaker: Claudi Thomas, Sarah Mattingly, Cath Brown and Emma Steele (The OU)

Abstract: The seminar will comprise of 5 short talks about student support initiatives on maths and stats
modules as mentioned in the 2022 Quality Monitoring and Enhancement (QME) report:

Quick response TMA advice forums - Claudi Thomas
TMA advice forums were introduced in response to a student consultation in March 2020, which highlighted the need for consistent and timely support in the run-up to TMA cut-off dates. We’ve been trialling these quick response forums on MST124, MST224 and MT365, to provide students with hints and tips for how to tackle TMA questions in the same way as their tutor might. Student feedback included the following: “really helpful in the stressful last few days before handing in a TMA” and “an option which feels available to all regardless of study pattern, time zones etc”.

Two tutorial initiatives - Sarah Mattingly
Back-to-basics tutorials on MST125: supporting students in revising pre-requisite material, just-in-time. M208 additional tutorials: helping struggling students get to grips with basic group theory and analysis.

Difficult and dangerous - Sarah Mattingly
Tutoring a group of challenging + SiSE students.

Student buddy system - Cath Brown
Introducing a student buddy system - recruitment, training and remit, plus how it’s going so far.

Working together on student support - Emma Steele
Due to increasing student numbers across varied qualification routes, M248 now runs a qualification-based tutor-student allocation. This talk will share how the module team, staff tutors and ALs worked together to successfully adopt these changes in tuition support.