Author: Yuriy Rogovchenko

The last good news for the project in 2019: the national Erasmus+ operator Diku approved PLATINUM’s interim report mentioning in the evaluation document that “All project activities planned for the first year have been carried out and the objectives have been reached. The delivered report is comprehensive and detailed; it gives a good overview of the already implemented activities, and the project’s overall progress.”

The report stresses that “The partnership has become visible through its events & trainings of local communities. In addition, PLATINUM consortium influences local university administration promoting new educational ideas and initiatives.” 

The PLATINUM consortium looks forward to new exciting events and collaboration in 2020!

During the Sixth MatRIC Annual Conference held in Bergen in November 2019, PLATINUM team members enjoyed the keynote address given by Professor Michael Dorff and had a number of interesting discussions afterwords. 

Michael Dorff is President of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and a professor of mathematics at Brigham Young University. He earned his Ph.D. in complex analysis from the University of Kentucky, researches in mathematics, and has given about 500 talks on mathematics. He is interested in promoting mathematics to the general public, in non-academic careers in mathematics, and in undergraduate research. Professor Dorff co-directs the MAA PIC Math program (Preparation for Industrial Careers in the Mathematical Sciences). He is the founder and director of the $2.6 million NSF-funded Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (CURM). He started and runs the BYU “Careers in Math” Speaker series and the BYU summer 8-week mathematics REU both funded by NSF grants.

Professor Dorff is a popular mathematics expository speaker giving about 25 invited presentations a year at conferences and other universities. He has received several university and national teaching awards including a Mathematical Association of America’s Haimo Teaching Award, the top U.S. award for teaching undergraduate mathematics, and BYU’s top teaching award, the Maeser Excellence in Teaching Award, both in 2010. In 2012, he was honored with BYU’s Egbert Teaching and Learning Fellowship and
was named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

In any free time he has, he enjoys reading, running, and traveling (he has traveled to 49 U.S. states and 45 countries).

Professor John Mason was one of the keynote speakers at the Sixth MatRIC Annual conference this year. Professor Mason is interested in the teaching of mathematics in schools in each and every phase, from kindergarten to university.

He retired as Professor Emeritus from the Open University in 2009 where he had worked for 39.5 years but maintains a very active life style conducting numerous workshops for teachers in the UK and abroad, leads seminars, and presents plenary lectures as he did in Bergen in November 2019.

PLATINUM team members enjoyed Professor Mason’s talk, actively participated in the workshop he led at the Sixth MatRIC Annual Conference, and had interesting discussions in the breaks. 

This year MatRIC’s 6th Annual Conference was held in Bergen at the Grand Hotel Terminus on October 14-15, 2019. The conference was opened by Kristin Flornes, Exectutive Vice-President (Technology) NORCE Norwegian Research Centre AS, and the Chair of the Diku Board. 

Two keynote speakers at the conference were 

Michael Dorff, Professor of Mathematics at Brigham Young University, Utah. Michael is currently President of the Mathematical Association of America

and

John Mason, Professor Emeritus in Mathematics from the Open University, UK and Honorary Research Fellow at Oxford University.

Thanks to generous support from MatRIC, 6th MatRIC Annual Conference was attended by the members of MatRIC team from the University of Amsterdam, Leibnitz University Hannover, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Masryk University and the University of Agder.

 

The PLATINUM team members from the Leibniz University Hanover (LUH) presented the work of PLATINUM at the meeting of the Centre for Higher Mathematics Education  at the University of Kassel. The presentation emphasized the role of inquiry in mathematics teaching and the team’s vision of further developments in mathematics teaching and learning. Afterwards, a discussion about the focus of the upcoming PLATINUM workshop on “Inquiry-Based Tasks in University Mathematics Education” at LUH.

The project coordinator Professor Yuriy Rogovchenko attended the contact seminar on Building Partnerships for a Learner-Centred Approach  hosted by SAAIC – the Slovak Erasmus+ National Agency with the aim to promote networking among organizations that plan to prepare new Strategic Partnership projects in the school sector and/or cross-sectoral school/higher education partnerships (KA201, KA229, KA203) focused on learner-centred teaching and learning.

In order to introduce wider audience to main ideas of inquiry-based mathematics education (IBME), PLATINUM, in association with MatRIC, organizes a one-day workshop at the University of Agder, Campus Kristiansand, on 18^th  November 2019.

This one-day workshop will focus on the design of inquiry-oriented mathematics tasks for students in any of the mathematics topics taught in three- or four-year undergraduate university study programs.  We plan to use this day to introduce what is the inquiry and what does inquiry mean for us in this project.  We will provide stimulating examples of inquiry-based tasks and will work with the tasks which project participants suggest for collaborative discussion turning them into inquiry tasks. 

Collaboration between the University of Agder https://www.uia.no/en and Ukrainain partners  becomes even stronger thanks to financial support provided by DIKU through the Eurasia program https://diku.no/en/programmes/eurasia-programme for the project CPEA-ST-2019/10067 Development of students’ mathematical competencies through Digital Mathematical Modeling (DeDiMaMo) aimed at the development of a new course on digital mathematical modelling https://www.uia.no/nyheter/diku-stoette-til-matematisk-modellerings-prosjekt-med-ukraina Three partners, University of Agder and two Ukrainian universities, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University http://partner.kubg.edu.ua/ and Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University http://tnpu.edu.ua/en/, received about 1.5 million Norwegian crowns for this two year project. The kick-off meeting is planned in Kyiv during November 13-15, 2019. Stay tuned to more news about DeDiMaMo!

The information about PLATINUM and interviews with our valuable team members Maria Králová and Josef Rebenda published earlier in Czech ahead of our project management meeting and workshop in Brno https://platinum.uia.no/publication-about-platinum-in-czech-media/
has been published now  in English https://www.universitas.cz/en/focus/3858-maths-is-a-detective-story-not-something-to-be-scared-of

We welcome this article and warmly invite all our team members and friends to read it.

PLATINUM coordinator Professor Yuriy Rogovchenko https://www.uia.no/en/kk/profil/yuriyr attended Erasmus+ meeting organized by the Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education DIKU https://diku.no/en on September 27, 2019 in Bergen.

The meeting gathered team members for newly funded and already running Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships projects who came to Bergen to learn about using Mobility+ Tool for running projects and reporting to the national authority and EU. Participants discussed presentations made by Ieva Serapinaite and Thomas De Ridder from DIKU and shared own experience and expectations. “Group work on the tasks suggested by DIKU and following discussions were very useful, especially advice received on running and reporting PLATINUM activities” says Yuriy Rogovchenko.