Context
Third-year BSc students in Maths at Durham take a 40-credit extended research project as part of their final year, with the goal of introducing them to the novel research undertaken by their lecturers. As a growing group of education-track academics in Maths, my colleagues and I have been working to incorporate our own education research projects into this framework, so that our scholarship is represented as part of the Department’s research-led curriculum.
One such project is the introduction of automated assessment into the curriculum. We now use STACK e-assessments in almost all courses at Levels 1 and 2, and work to develop suitable materials for Level 3 is ongoing.
The project
In 2024-5, Sam Fearn and I offered the project topic “STACK it up,” in which five third-year students learned how to write STACK questions: both from a technical standpoint and from the point of view of the pedagogical literature focusing on assessment. The students were asked to write an assessment based on a topic related to one of their other modules, and reflect on its effectiveness with a grounding in scholarship.
Outcomes
The students reported that working on this project gave them a different perspective on the assessments they encountered in all of their other modules. Learning how STACK questions are built gave them more insight into the challenges faced by their lecturers; in some cases they could identify why the questions from their other courses were not behaving as anticipated. Understanding the pedagogical theory behind assessment design helped them to see the value of different questions in the assignments they were set, and empathising with their lecturers helped them to feel more actively engaged in their learning. During the Easter break, all five of the students presented their questions to an international STACK conference, encouraging them to see themselves as part of the STACK community and emphasising that their work really is cutting-edge and at the forefront of mathematical scholarship.
Presentation at the 2025 STACK conference, 8 April 2025.
Presentation at the Durham Teaching and Learning Conference 2025.