In undergraduate mathematics education, students' collaborations have gained a reputation as a 'good' learning practice. A more complex image emerges once collaborations are construed as an arena where cognitive, social, and affective matters intertwine in ways that can fuel and impede learning. In this study, I take a close look at a…

This paper describes the development and efficacy of an online tool for assessing the numeracy of undergraduate students. The tool was designed to be easy to administer, provide immediate feedback to students on whether they had the required level of numeracy, and to be consistent with other measures of adult numeracy. When used with students…

Two first-year engineering mathematics courses used computer-aided assessment (CAA) to provide students with opportunities for formative assessment via a series of weekly quizzes. Most students used the assessment until they achieved very high (>90%) quiz scores. Although there is a positive correlation between these quiz marks and the final…

As a result of the Canterbury earthquake on 4 September 2010, and associated aftershocks on 22 February 2011 and 13 June 2011, final examinations in the two first-year Economics papers at Canterbury University were cancelled at short notice in Semester 1, 2011. The final examination weightings were spread over the remaining assessments to obtain a…