Investigating students' levels of engagement with mathematics: critical events, motivations, and influences on behaviour

Gender Differences in the Level of Engagement with Mathematics Support in Higher Education in Ireland

“…Female students were no more likely to cite peer influence, in contrast to the findings of Han and Li (2009). In fact, peers were ranked very low by both genders in terms of motivation for attending mathematics support if they had not previously done so, although Grehan et al (2016) found that the influence of friends emerged as a strong factor among students who used mathematics support. No clear specific suggestions that could be acted on by support staff emerged from male students who were not engaging with mathematics support as to what would make them likely to attend in greater numbers.…”

“…The widespread provision of mathematics support across HEIs in Ireland, the United Kingdom and Australia has been welldocumented in recent years (Perkin et al 2012;Gill et al 2008;MacGillivray 2008). Best practice guides are available for establishing mathematics support centres (Mac an Bhaird et al 2012) and numerous papers have explored the effectiveness of such support services for students who engage with mathematics support, using a variety of approaches such as analysis of usage data (Croft 2000;Ní Fhloinn 2009;MacGillivray 2009), internal student questionnaires and focus groups (Parsons et al 2011;Carroll and Gill 2012;Grehan et al 2016), evidence from external sources such as the UK National Student Survey (results of which are available at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/lt/nss/results/), and measures of the potential impact of mathematics support upon retention and performance (Pell and Croft 2008;Mac an Bhaird et al 2009;Gill and O'Donoghue 2006) with overwhelmingly positive results overall. For a detailed review of these and other such research, see Matthews et al (2012).…”

Using Incoming Data to Monitor Engagement and Inform Mathematics Support Interventions

“…Nonetheless, data-driven interventions can help maintain regular attendance and engage hard to reach students. Some of them may be affected by known reasons for non-engagement such as managing their studies and other commitments, low motivation and emotional reasons related to low performance (Symonds et al, 2008;Grehan et al, 2016).…”

“…Students being aware of the service and deciding to invest their time are additional challenges for optional teaching activities. Social and emotional reasons and different motivations towards study also affect engagement with mathematics support (Symonds et al, 2008;Mac an Bhaird et al, 2013;Grehan et al, 2016). Another difficulty drawn from our experience is that most students would not commute to the campus to exclusively attend co-curricular activities or use the facilities, unless combined with their academic timetable.…”

The Role of a Full-time Mathematics Support Tutor

“…Full-time MLS tutors will have a clear advantage over other MLS tutors in such situations, with the added benefit of having an opportunity to develop good working relationships with students. It is well documented that students often have a fear of mathematics, or are afraid to ask for help (Grehan et al, 2016). In the MSC, students often need a tutor who has both a sympathetic ear and the skills to help them cope with their mathematical difficulties.…”