News

The second PLATINUM webinar will be held on May 7, 2021, between 15:00-18:00 CEST. The webinar will be moderated by Simon Goodchild, Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Agder, Norway.

This webinar with interactive parts will focus on inquiry based mathematical tasks and teaching units at the university level. The interactive parts including a breakout rooms session will be arranged by 

John Mason, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Open University, UK

with introduction by

Barbara Jaworski, Professor of Mathematics Education in the Mathematics Education Centre at Loughborough University, UK

and

André Heck, Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The webinar is organised by PLATINUM community members from Masaryk University, the University of Agder, Loughborough University, the University of Amsterdam, Leibniz University Hannover, Complutense University of Madrid, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University and Brno University of Technology.

Information about registration and the programme can be found at https://platinum.uia.no/platinum-workshop-bringing-inquiry-into-ones-mathematics-classroom/

 

The first PLATINUM webinar will be held on March 9, 2021, between 15:00-18:21 CET. The webinar will be moderated by Simon Goodchild, Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Agder, Norway.

Two keynote addresses on important aspects of Inquiry-Based Mathematics Education will be delivered by 

Michèle Artigue, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Education at Paris Diderot University, France

and

Barbara Jaworski, Professor of Mathematics Education in the Mathematics Education Centre at Loughborough University, UK.

The webinar is organised by PLATINUM community members from Masaryk University, the University of Agder, Loughborough University, the University of Amsterdam, Leibniz University Hannover, Complutense University of Madrid, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University and Brno University of Technology.

Information about registration and the programme can be found at https://platinum.uia.no/platinum-webinar-inquiry-in-university-mathematics-teaching-and-learning/

International research shows that one of the factors in the progress of educational reforms depends on the individual and collective ability of teachers to help improve the educational process. Two different comprehensive studies of the factors influencing student learning have reached the same conclusion: the most important variable in student achievement is the quality of learning they receive on a daily basis (Marzano, 2003; Hattie, 2009). Read more…

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.