A practical guide to maths-centre evaluation

Abstract

In this article, we outline the process undertaken to establish and evaluate a mathematics centre at the Ravensburg-Weingarten University of Applied Sciences. Firstly, we outline some of the current research into centre evaluation. Secondly, we give a brief overview of our centre, including details on staffing, teaching format, goals, etc. Subsequently, we provide a practical guide on how to evaluate data, such as student participation at the centre, and two quantitative surveys using the Cross-industry standard process for data mining. In this way, we employ a well-established method from data mining in the context of mathematical centre evaluation. Based on our centre, we provide an example of how to use the standard to identify centre participation, offer uptake, centre development, as well as student background, self-efficacy, quality of support and its impact on mathematical understanding and examination pass rates. As many centres do not have permanent funding, evaluation is important as it allows them to be justified to faculties and other stakeholders. We found that our approach provides a very powerful toolchain and can be used as a blueprint for other centre administrators to break down the complex task of centre evaluation into several stages.

Keywords

• Maths-centre
• evaluation
• data-mining
• survey
• statistics
• maths-support