A new cohort of Teaching & Learning fellows is concluding their fellowship on 27 January. Assistant professor Fulya Kula is one of those fellows. She developed a bridging course to upgrade math skills, which is now being used UT-wide for first-year engineering students.
What was the reason to set up this bridging course in the first place?
‘It stems from the observation that an increasing number of students in engineering programmes is struggling with essential mathematical concepts. A university assumes this is prior knowledge from secondary education. Yet, we’ve observed both a gap in math skills and in conceptual understanding among first-year students – that’s something I also hear from colleagues. It’s a shame, because the lack of understanding often leads to frustration, a loss of confidence, study delay or even dropouts. So I wanted to develop something to help students out where they need it the most.’
How did you go about that?
‘Well, it started in the academic year 2022/2023, with a half-day workshop for students of the Civil Engineering programme. At the end of the session, there was still quite some material we weren’t able to cover, so I referred the students to some explanatory videos. That didn’t quite work, since the videos somehow didn’t stick with students. So I decided to apply for a 4TU. Centre for Engineering Education call and received funding to set up the bridging course. The thought behind that was: if you offer students a course in their online learning environment – Canvas – they are more likely to follow through with it since it’s part of this environment.’