A SLIGO lecturer has found a very simple way of helping students achieve more in mathematics. She took away their calculators.
All first-year maths students at the Institute of Technology, Sligo, have to abstain from using calculators for their first semester. Lecturers implemented the calculator ban after watching students become dependent on them, diligently recording any number the calculator spit out with “pure acceptance”.
“We started to notice they weren’t thinking critically, and they were using them as sort of a crutch,” lecturer Dr Etain Kiely said.
As the students reached for the calculators, the Sligo lecturers realised very few were comfortable with mathematics.
In a survey of 200 students, the word most often used to describe maths was “hard”. The next three most popular choices were “nervous”, “worried” and “calculator”.
Even those who tested well in maths were not confident in their abilities. Of the students who scored over 80 per cent in the semester pre-test, almost half said they were not sure if they were good at maths. But just because they were not comfortable with the subject does not mean they did not see its usefulness. Most thought maths skills would help them find a job after school, and almost all found the skills useful.
“Generally they don’t have negative perceptions about mathematicians or studying maths, which we were quite surprised by,” said Dr Kiely.
It’s all about confidence which the time without calculators helps to create. After a semester, students are comfortable with numeracy without the calculator, she added. But they consider the return of their calculators an early Christmas present.