Analysing the effect of an interdisciplinary science course on student perceptions of mathematics, science, and computer programming: a longitudinal study

Project Level: Winter

Project Duration:

4 weeks – 25 hrs per week. Applicant can perform duties for the project onsite or remotely.

Description:

This project will give students the opportunity to work with longitudinal pre- and post- test data to evaluate changes in student attitudes towards
and perceptions of mathematics, science, and computer programming and identify whether any trends emerge in this data over time.
The overarching project that this winter student will work on is motivated by a strong national interest in STEM education - Australia aims to
encourage more students to choose STEM disciplines. Educational research has linked students’ vocational choices and students’ learning to their
attitudes towards a subject. A broad goal of this study is to understand whether an interdisciplinary science course may influence these perceptions and attitudes.

Expected Outcomes:

This project will allow scholars to gain experience in cleaning and analysing quantitative survey data using SPSS, R, and/or Python. A successful project may lead to a scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) publication.

Suitable for:

This project is open to applications from students with a background in statistics who have completed STAT3500 or STAT2004 & MATH2504.
The student must not have taken SCIE1000 between 2019-2023 to ensure that they are not part of the dataset they are analysing. However, they
may have taken SCIE1100 between 2020-2023, as these student survey responses will not be part of the current project.

Further Information:

For further information about the project, please contact Dr Sara Davies or Dr Ava Greenwood.