STEMinar Series: eSTEeM Scholarship Showcase - 21st January 2025

Dates: 

Tuesday, January 21, 2025 - 14:00 to 15:00

Location

Via MS Teams

Contact

eSTEeM

Building a sense of belonging to aid retention at a level 2 Physics module

Anne-Katrin Klehe

In ‘22/’23 a group of 60 out of 475 students in a 60-credit level 2 physics module were offered informal, extra weekly online meetings predominantly at the beginning of the module to foster a sense of belonging within the group. The question was whether the offer of and/or the meetings would have an effect on retention.

It was found that within a larger than 85% confidence level retention, as measured by attendance of the end-of-year exam in June ’23, had increased by 10% in my test group compared to the rest of the cohort that year. In this talk I will discuss qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of this project.

Are You Ready for Your Studies - Are we Assessing Students Readiness? An evaluation of the usefulness of the Level 2 ARFY quizzes

Soraya Kouadri Mostéfaoui and Oli Howson

The Are You Ready for Your Studies Quizzes have been implemented within the school of Computing & Communications to help students decide whether they are ready to study a module. This eSTEeM project evaluated the usefulness of such quizzes for the core level 2 modules. Are the quizzes really assessing the students’ readiness to begin studying their level 2 modules? Do they give an accurate indication of future success? The research focused particularly on programming heavy modules with low retention and/or students’ satisfaction. M250, TT284 and M269 were investigated, along with TM255 which was used as a comparator module as it is Level 2 with non-programming content.  Both the students’ and the educators’ perspectives were considered in the project, through a mixed method approach the views of students, tutors and module team members were collected and analysed.

In this presentation we will present our findings and discuss the lessons learned. 

Registration

This event is open to OU staff, please visit the registration form to sign-up. Registration will close at midday on the 21st January. If you would like to attend, but have not regsitered by then, please contact esteem@open.ac.uk.  

Keep up to date on the STEMinar Series by visiting the STEMinar Series intranet site.