Sponsor/year: Faculty of Business & Law, 2016.

Project leads: Sagarika Mishra, Harsh Suri, Annette Nguyen.

Aim: Develop all students’ mathematics literacies required to pass Finance units in the Bachelor of Commerce.

Underpinning theories/literature:

• Cognitive load theory: foundational text on this learning theory.
• Inclusive curriculum design in higher education: considerations for effective practice across and within subject areas (PDF 326KB): introduction to the concept of designing inclusive curriculum for higher education.

• Available as needed: Relevant videos are embedded throughout the CloudDeakin study guide, lecture slides and assignment instructions, so they are easy for students to access as needed. These students may access them as often as they like, but students who do not require them can continue on without having to sit through explanations of things they already know.
• Targeted: The videos are short, simple and concise, modelled on the Khan Academy style, so students can access the information they need in small amounts, rather than having to listen or scroll through large amounts of information they don’t need.
• Contextualised: The videos were made by MAF101 academics, using example problems students would typically encounter as they worked through the learning activities and assessment tasks in their Finance units. This ensured they were as relevant to students’ needs as possible, and consistent in style, requiring minimal additional effort to understand.
• Integrated: As part of the video-making process, unit chairs mapped the mathematics skills that were required in their units and rationalised their learning tasks and assessments to make a streamlined, integrated learning package.

Example calculation from customised BComm video explaining mathematical concepts

• Number of views: The 19 videos had 1298 views during Trimester 1 2017. These ranged from 23 to 264 per video over the trimester (median 56) (internal report).
• Fewer student queries: Unit chairs reported having far fewer student queries than in previous trimesters (interview).
• Students recommend: CloudDeakin discussions included postings in which students directed each other to the videos for assistance and endorsed the videos with comments such as ‘extremely helpful’ (internal report).
• Students’ success rates: Low socioeconomic (LSES) students’ success rate in MAF101 was 15.2% higher in Trimester 1 2017 than in Trimester 1 2016. The mean grade for LSES students was 8.8 points higher in the same period and their non-completion rate dropped 2.7%. Success rates and mean grades for all students were also 9.1% and 7.6 points higher respectively over the same year (SIPU). Similar significant upward trends were recorded in MAF203 after inclusion of the videos in T1 2017 (SIPU).
• Extended to whole course: The Faculty extended the project in 2017 to map maths literacy requirements and work towards developing videos to meet those needs in all BComm units (internal report).