University of Exeter
Sigma Project
Oliver Bond
A bit about me
Oliver Bond
• Just completed first year at University of Exeter
studying maths
• Created online resources for other students
throughout the year (e.g. worked solutions,
online revision sessions, course notes)
• Also a course representative with SSLC.
Background
• There are already many mathematical resources available
for students online, such as:
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YouTube videos
mathcentre.ac.uk
nrich.org.uk
mei.org.uk
ocw.mit.edu
• However, a lot of these resources are dispersed and not
easily navigable.
• Also, a lot of these resources are fairly static on web pages
– and not a lot of room for community input (i.e. from
students and staff)
Our project
Our aims:
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To collect, evaluate and recommend different online resources for certain
topics and to put these websites into an easily accessible database.
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To create a community website to enable staff and students to
communicate and share resources and expertise.
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To explore the potential of Web 2.0 to create an interactive community
support site (e.g. online drop-in clinics, discussion boards, wikis etc.).
Where would this be?
• labspace.open.ac.uk
– for example:
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=659
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• Labspace is a hub for online educational
resources, which can be developed by the
community.
• This is an implementation of Moodle, which is
used by some universities as their VLEs.
Rough timescales
• The project will be carried out over 8
weeks:
– Weeks 1-2: Reviewing existing resources and
working out where they are for each topic (a
mapping exercise)
– Weeks 3-7: Building the community site and
developing new resources where appropriate.
– Week 8: Evaluation from the other project
students?