The fourth workshop in the IMA Higher Education Teaching and Learning Series 2018/19 was held at Middlesex University on June 27th. The title of the workshop was Programming in the Undergraduate Mathematics Curriculum. The intention of the workshop was to provide a platform for colleagues to discuss approaches to teaching and assessing programming to mathematics students in undergraduate mathematics programmes, and to disseminate good practice. As more emphasis is placed on developing employability skills in undergraduate curricula Peter Rowlett (co-organiser) and myself felt it would be useful to run this workshop to collect experiences of teaching programming.
The workshop consisted of seven talks by speakers from both academia and industry. The talks covered a number of areas from industry-focussed curriculum design to case studies of assessment tools used at different institutions.
The morning session began with a talk by Noel-Ann Bradshaw, To code or not to code? For employers there is no question, on the employability of mathematics graduates and their journey into programming in industry. Having worked both in industry and in academia this authoritatively delivered talk served to set the scene for the day and provide a useful focus for subsequent talks.
A number of talks related experiences of running courses either specifically teaching programming or with programming embedded in the curriculum. Notably most speakers taught Python rather than other languages citing its simple syntax and ease of use, as well as the move more towards machine learning and data science as routes into employment. A number of talks demonstrated the use of web-based syntax-checking tools used either as formative or summative assessment. Some evidence was given to suggest their use improved student engagement and achievement in programming assignments.
A particularly interesting talk by Vincent Knight, Four stories: four models of learning, discussed different strategies to engage and teach students at different levels from first year undergraduates to PhD candidates. Although slightly outside the remit of the workshop (which was intended to discuss the undergraduate curriculum only) this talk served to highlight different needs of students at different levels and discussed approaches to teaching that address these needs.
In my talk I argued that there is a need to introduce mathematics students to the more practical side of programming including working in groups, writing and using libraries and APIs in programming. I gave a case study of a group assignment that requires students to introduce version control (using Git) and to segregate code using object oriented design patterns in order to accomplish the given task.
The workshop was a useful opportunity to pool common experience and approaches to programming and highlighted a number of different approaches to its inclusion in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum. The workshop program and abstracts will be made available at the Middlesex University Mathematics website.
MSOR Connections
The special issue of MSOR Connections on the theme of programming in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum, which grew out the 2018/19 workshop as part of the HE Teaching and Learning Series, has now been published. It contains three contributions from the workshop and five others from an open call for papers.
MSOR Connections
Vol 18, No 2 (2020)
Special issue on programming in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum
Editors: Peter Rowlett and Matthew M. Jones
