Contents
Presenters
Professor Shabnam Beheshti – Head of Department, Mathematics
Paper
“Can we just talk about our feelings today?” said no Mathematics student ever. And yet, over the course of a decade of supervising UG/PGT research projects across two continents, it was precisely those sessions in which students shared their hopes, fears and dreams, that I found us returning to the technical content with renewed energy and a fresh perspective.
In this talk, I will share my journey as a Mathematician in (re)designing group projects to improve engagement and facilitate interdisciplinary thinking in STEM (and beyond). As a developmental technique, coaching can be used to allow supervisors to rescind a more directive role, making space for conversations around personal experience and goals [1]. We shall observe how using *non-discipline-specific* coaching techniques can be used to motivate students to actively engage with *discipline-specific* aspects of their work [2]. Finally, we will reflect on how this student-led approach ultimately guides both stylistic and technical aspects of the research projects in unexpected and interesting ways [3]. This talk is aimed at any colleague considering cross-disciplinary approaches to teaching and project work, also those who enjoy a bit of positive storytelling.
References
Kim, A. et al. (2024) ‘Transformative but Not Easy: Students’ Experiences of an Interdisciplinary, Project-Based Capstone Course’, Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 15(2). Available at: https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotlrcacea.2024.2.13646.
Downey, M. (1999) ‘Effective Coaching.’ Orion Business Books.
The Complete Handbook of Coaching, 4th Ed. (2023) Edited by E. Cox, T. Bachkirova, and D. Clutterbuck. Sage Publications.
