• Site Map
• Campus Map
• A-Z Index
• Staff Intranet
• Contacts

Building leadership capacity for the development and sharing of mathematics learning resources across disciplines and universities

 An ALTC Leadership for Excellence in Teaching and Learning grant.

Project Leader:     Associate Professor Anne Porter School of Mathematics & Applied Statistics

 Symposiums

About the Project

The ALTC Project addresses the need to build leadership capacity in teaching and learning, specifically in the area of learning resource development, acquisition and sharing. It builds upon the UOW led Carrick project, Developing the Faculty scholars model, (Lefoe, LD69, 2006) in recognising the value of cross-faculty networks to encourage the dissemination of knowledge and ideas. This project expands upon the Lefoe approach in that it seeks to grow the model from involving the sharing of creative ideas to the sharing of technology-based resources. The building of capacity sector wide involves the initial university participants in later stages, mentoring another universities and/or disciplines.  Links with these other institutions have been forged with participants at the early symposia 2008 and 2009 identifying how they wish to become involved in the project. Between symposia, participants have been able to meet to share expertise on a regular basis using Access Grid technology. If you are interested in joining the fortnightly meetings across the Access Grid, please contact the Project Coordinator.  A list of dates for 2009 are provided here.  Please contact the Project Coordinator in the first instance.

The project has been jointly funded via a grant from Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic & International) Rob Castle, University of Wollongong.  A strong focus for this project is to provide peer-reviewed video resources which can be shared among universities and be made available through a website or similar repository.  All resources are licensed under creative commons (licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia) to enable lecturers and educators to use and adapt the resources with the permission of the developers but with recognition (More about Creative Commons). 

An earlier project at the University of Wollongong culminated in the Summertime Mathematics Website (link) which is currently being used for students entering or in first year university subjects which require mathematics skills.  This website is open to the public and students.

In February this year, we held a symposium at the University of Wollongong across two days.  Topics covered were maths leadership, resource creation using Tablet technology, evaluation, peer reviewing and learning design.  There is another planned symposium being held in 2010.  Details regarding this will be released in July this year.  For any inquiries regarding the symposiums, please contact the Project coordinator.

Maths and Statistics Resources       

The project is developing mathematics and statistics video resources through the use of tablet PC technology.  We are using the tablets to create generic videos which can be used in 100 level/first year mathematics subjects and contextualised videos for other disciplines at all levels.    The aim for the resources is to create short grabs of mathematical instruction to support students and motivational videos.  Ideally these videos would be less than 5 minutes long and be small file sizes (less than 6Mb) so that the students can watch and re-watch if necessary.

We have purchased Fujitsu Lifebook T4220 tablets and Toshiba M700 tablets for the project- with a key requirement that the processor be 2.4GHz with 160GB Sata HDD.  We are using Camtasia Studio to record screen image, movement and audio and to conduct the final editing to produce Shockwave files for FlashPlayer videos.  Using Pdf Annotator allows us to use any document (word, power point, pdf) or a blank screen in which to record and annotate.  It offers a wide range of pens/highlighter options and is easy for people to use.

Access to Resources

It is the intention of the project to provide the peer reviewed resources in a repository or content management system which is open source. The repository will hold the videos to be downloadable to be placed into a learning design and learning content system.  This is an ongoing project, with individual resources having been successfully used in subjects. We expect to have a trial of the repository from July 2009.  This repository will be available following the end of the project and additional video resources added to it.

Contact Information

Project Leader:              
Associate Professor Anne Porter
Email:alp@uow.edu.au
Phone: 4221 4058
Fax: 4221 4845

Project Coordinator:       
Ms Sue Denny
Email: sdenny@uow.edu.au
Phone: 4221 4943
Fax: 4221 4845

Collaborative Partner Leader:  Mr Antony Dekkers

CQU Team Members

Mrs Nadine Adams
Mr Philip Budgeon
Mr Peter Cherry
Mr Clinton Hayes
Mr Steven Millan

Support for this project has been provided from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd, an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.

The views expressed in this project do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd.