Project Leader: Dr Simona Montagnana, Economics

This project, which was awarded funding by the Teaching Development Fund (TDF) Seed, aims to redesign formative assessments of mathematical subjects within Economics programs. With the intent to inspire and motivate students to actively study mathematics. Facilitated by NUMBAS, a free and open-source online mathematics assessment system, the new assessment framework/protocol will specifically promote active learning, by providing detailed and instantaneous feedback to the students.

The Mathematics Resources Centre (MASH) has built a large bank of NUMBAS questions, mostly focused on A-level content, that is currently used to support students with the transition to university. This project aims to take the existing NUMBAS resources and contextualise them for the Economics students. This will provide formative assessments with a detailed model answers to help students to engage the subject in a 'deep learning' way. Having access to model answers, students will be able to see directly what is expected from them, and by contextualising available resources they can easily see it value and practice as much as they like. NUMBAS feedback is instantaneous, so students easily recognise and understand learning gaps.

In this sense, the formative assessment feedback is essential to encourage students’ engagement especially for a deep learning of the most demanding topics of quantitative economics.

You can see the write up here. It's hosted on the university's GitHub so you'll need your standard username and password to view.