 Good morning. My name is Kearno Sullivan. I'm from the Institute of Technology in Tallah. I'm a maths lecturer, I'm passionate about maths, and I also want to know about your shoe size. So I've given a piece of paper and a pen here, and I'd like you all to write your shoe size down as I go through the talk. Thanks very much. Okay. I work with a very dynamic staff in Tallah, and one of the challenges we face in an ongoing basis is that students, adult learners and school leavers are coming to do courses and mathematics may not be the thing that they see as their number one strength. So we've been trying to design innovative responses to that over many years, and today I want to concentrate mainly with re-engaging adult learners, and my realization of confidence is the key to that. So when people are trying to think about adult learners coming back, they view a deficit model where they think, here's the learner, we have to stuff as much mathematics back into the learner as possible. But we don't agree with that, and we've tried various things over the years to try to address that in a different way. So back in the good old days, in the early 2000s, when there were skills shortages, we were asked to design a response to try to get more students to do electronic engineering. And one of the inhibitors was mathematics being a problem. So the graphic shows the various elements, not just a module descriptor, but the various elements we thought we'd have to bring together. And today I just want to concentrate on the fact that we use a reflective diary, we change the student dynamic, and we tried not to stuff all the mathematics into it, we tried not to take a deficit approach. We did this, worked very well, we wrote it up, we reflected on it, we got more engaged with an international research forum called Adults Learning Mathematics, and we learned from it, particularly from the reflections from the student diaries. Fast forward a couple of years, we're then into a crisis in the economy. So now we have a different thing that we have to respond to, which is a labour activation program in terms of trying to get students, adults to think about going back to college to upscale. So we were faced with the idea of trying as part of an overall very creative preparatory course for adults to re-engage with higher education. We were told we would have to put together a preparatory maths part of that. But we were told you only have 12 hours, you only have two hours a week over six weeks. But from engaging with the international research group and from the reflective diaries, I had come to the conclusion that trying to deal with maths anxiety was the key. And even though there was only 12 hours, I just want to concentrate on what we did to try and do that. So there was an excellent book by Alan Bass which had very practical maths study skills. And in there he had a chapter around about dealing with maths anxiety. And rather than just doing it as here's maths anxiety and so on, the first session consists of the students arrive. They don't know each other. We do show them an Abbot and Costello video. They laugh. We then have a few ice breakers. They work together in groups. And then eventually when they're comfortable we say, I'm putting up this slide. I want a response from each of your groups to this slide. And they brainstorm those ideas down to the front of the room. And they come up with a list of a lot of different things that they're worried about. Firstly, formulas. Remembering formulas. That was the big thing that a lot of the students said. So I could just go, that's gone. You don't have to remember formulas because we're going to give you all the formula sheets. You're now adults. We're going to do maths differently. And that was the important thing. And lack of application. They couldn't see the application of what their mathematics was. But I was able to reassure them on that as well. Typically we can remove all their concerns except for it's going to require work. Everything requires work. So back to your shoe size. So we do this. It takes about an hour to an hour. Out of 12 hours. And you're kind of thinking, I have to get everything else done. But it's been very, very effective. Then we do some maths. But the first maths we do, we decided to start with statistics. We do other stuff as well when we start with statistics. Because we felt that was a way in for adults. So your shoe size. Now I can't do this today. I am going to gather all the data. And I'll do it over lunch to tell you what your average shoe size is. But the main idea is a middle representative number. And a range around those numbers. Two numbers should be able to summarise everybody's shoe size. And the whole dynamic in the room. What's the most natural thing to do in terms of getting halves. Is to fold something in half. That's the most intuitive thing to do. So what I do with the students is I can't do it here. But I get them all up to the top of the room. And some of my students helped me with this earlier in the week. And up to the top of the room they all have their shoe size. Range them in order. And we fold them in half. Now how do you fold adults in half. This is what you do. You count up. You count down. And where it overlaps. That's where the median is. And they have that number very, very fast. And then the other representative for the middle is mode. And mode you get from a bar chart. Which you can make a bar chart very quickly. Now I've done this with 60, 70 people in a lecture room. We managed to do it. It can get done. But in terms of the reflection is the other key thing. We were doing reflection. We saw there was great power in the reflectories. Sorry, just in the statistics. The whole point then is they are now going to do some statistics. And we start with a brilliant idea from my colleague James Riley. Which is that we give them a shell project. So they have to go and find 50 measurements. And they're going to do some statistical processing on that. But the variety of things they come back with. Because they're coming with ideas from their own lives. Is really, really powerful. In terms of the reflection sheets. We were using the reflection sheets. Two simple prompts. My reflections and an action off that. What have I learned from these reflections? What we used to do was they did it as a diary. And then at the end of it, we'd have a look at the diary. But I felt because we team teach this. Even if there's 60 people in the room. Make sure we have a lecturer and somebody riding shotgun to make sure no one's getting left behind. But at the start of every, at the start of every, the start of the second session. For example, they'll hand up their reflection sheets. The second person will have a look at those reflection sheets. So we can respond in real time. Or as close to real time as we can. To any concerns that come up. And at the end of the module, they do a reflection sheet. But what we found very powerful as well. Was then that they were able to. We were able to see how the learning went. So at the end of week one. This is a word of the kind of words that were coming up. Looking forward, interested, reassured. Understanding they were the words that were coming front and center. At the end of the six weeks. Confident and learning and enjoyed. With the words that were coming out. But more important than that. Is this is. No good unless if they come to college. That they can progress. So we've done a little bit of analysis in terms of students who've done this course. Who've gone on to college. And we found that they, they progress in higher proportions from year one to year two. Then other learners and the overall cohort. Thanks very much for listening.