Online Course (MOOC): Numeracy Skills for Employability and the Workplace

FutureLearn has just released a new course: Numeracy Skills for Employability and the Workplace. This aims to improve your mathematical confidence and gain the skills to pass employers’ numeracy tests with this free online course.

This free online course from the Mathematics Education Centre at Loughborough University will help you improve or revise your knowledge of mathematics. You will gain the numeracy skills needed to succeed in both employers’ numeracy tests and the workplace. It is designed to build your confidence. Over three weeks, we will look at where numbers occur in everyday life and what numeracy means in this context. We will look at the rationale behind employers’ numeracy testing and the skills you will need to be successful. In addition to refreshing your understanding of specific numeracy skills (such as percentages, ratios, averages and currency conversions), you will develop essential skills for interpreting numerical data and understanding statistics.

For more information, and to enrol, visit:

• https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/numeracy-skills 

Disclaimer

This online course is not designed or delivered by members of Learning Services, therefore, we can take no responsibility for the content.

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Usage Stats: Learning Services Maths Support

Given we are nearing the end of the academic year, I thought it would be useful to publish the log data for the Learning Services Maths Support Resource.

As you maybe aware, this site was developed as part of our changing support model for Maths at UCS. The new support model more clearly identifies the responsibilities between Learning Services and the Course Teams / Lecturers.

The aim of this resource is to provide a repository for discipline and/or task specific how to guides (both created in house, or sourced from Khan Academy and HEIs), provide a gateway to available online courses (either created in house, or via MOOC platforms), and link to quality assured resources created by similar teams in other UK HEIs.

Please note, as a new resource there is no comparable data. However, the following is very interesting as it highlights a number of key observations. Firstly, the resource is being used, secondly the majority of visitors are finding this resource via Google and not through our internal promotion, and thirdly, nearly half the accesses are from outside the UK.

• Page views (September 2014 to May 2015): 2,207
• Total number of posts (September 2014 to May 2015): 13
• Traffic Source: Google
• Audience: 53.5% from UK, 21.9% from USA

Publication Pattern of Posts

The intention was to post a minimum of two posts per month. It is evident this was achieved for the majority of time.

• Sept 2014: 2
• Oct 2014: 2
• Nov 2014: 4
• Dec 2014: 1
• Jan 2015: 2
• Feb 2015: 0
• March 2015: 2
• April 2105: 0

Most popular posts

• Monthly video: Hypothesis Testing: 364 page views (16.5 of total page views)

Most popular pages

The following pattern supports the opinion within Learning Services we need to improve the impact of the Building Blocks page, which we view as text heavy and static. We are in the process of creating a number of getting started video guides, and exploring an ask a question option.

• Building Blocks: 274 page views
• Health & Science: 121 page views
• Getting Support: 86 page views
• Online Courses: 62 page views
• Dissertations: 54 page views
• Arts, Business & ASS: 41 page views

If you have any questions around this post or Maths Support at UCS, please email Learning Services (learningservices@ucs.ac.uk).

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Re-arranging an equation: making a variable the subject

We've just released a Getting Started Guide on how to re-arrange an equation. This complements materials we have in the Building Blocks Series.

If you have any questions, please contact learningservices@ucs.ac.uk

Statistics Guide for Beginners: Maureen Haaker

Are you looking for help around statistics?

If yes, the following resource was written by Maureen Haaker, a Lecturer in the Dept of Children, Young People and Education (Faculty of Arts, Business and Applied Social Science), and she has kindly shared it with us;

• Statistics Guide for Beginners (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8aF5QN3s_UDWm9IcGg4WHJoNGc/view)

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Descriptive & Inferential Stats ... plus a few other things

This post is informed by a Level 5 Adult Nurse student who asked the question as an outcome of the module she is studying on Research for Practice (Qualitative Methods and Tools).

What is the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics?

Descriptive Stats: In more depth

This video gives some really useful background to the different types of data, based on examples, what tests you can perform based on the type of data, and how to apply it to your research or when reading research papers.

UEA Online Maths Support: A great starting place

Increasingly, people are using the Internet and YouTube to help them with their Maths. We'd strongly encourage this move as there is a wealth of information available. Therefore, to help you get to navigate this wealth of knowledge, we are recommending a good starting point for your journey is the following source. The reason being it offers excellent coverage, it is easy to navigate to the information areas, and the majority of the guides are available as videos.

The University of East Anglia's Learning Enhancement Team: Maths

Monthly Video: Hypothesis Testing (small sample - t test)

A requirement is the use of statistics to help us either accept or reject a hypothesis (A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis).

The accepting or rejecting of a Null Hypothesis, often involves a T Test (where the sample is less than 30) or a Z Test (where the sample is greater than 30).

The following video walks through an illustration of what this means and how to complete a T Test. Although the software application often calculates the actual number, it is really useful for us to understand how it is calculated to help our interpretation. The following video is from the Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/).


If you have any questions, please email learningservices@ucs.ac.uk