Presentation pitch for industrial partners

Monday 9 September 2019
by  Patrick Berger

Mathematics meets Industry in School – Knowledge to Innovation through Practice: Guidelines

The application of mathematics in real life is an absolute must for any curriculum nowadays and moreover for those gifted pupils who can contribute in innovation that could make the human life better and at the same time promoting entrepreneurship in the school curricula. Mathematics meets industry: Industry poses challenging unsolved problems, mathematics aims to solve the riddle during a single day relying only on pen, paper, computer, and group brainstorming.

Activities will include the formation of teams to attack proposed industrial problems. Teams will be composed of mathematicians with very different levels of seniority, i.e. senior researchers, university doctoral students, university students and upper secondary education gifted students. The problem owners from each of the companies will also join the teams. The working language could be the local with support in English. The model, monitoring, evaluation and related report in the form of guidelines for teachers, schools, universities and industry for promoting and applying such model cooperation with mathematically gifted school students will be the main product of this output.

The proposed method acronym for this Output is MID and the guidance on how to implement the proposed MID day will be presented on the online platform as a result of INNOMATH. In this guidance, the worked examples collected from the implementation of piloting will be presented. One aim is that a school teacher can use the worked examples directly in regular teaching. A second aim is that schools, universities or industry can be guided to implement a MID day anywhere.

The methodology pathway is described below:

Planning phase: As it will be agreed where the method will be tested consortium members will announce the MID day in their local environment, guided by the leading partner.

Starting phase: Two – three local industries are invited by each consortium member to propose unsolved problems.

Preparation phase: Participating Consortium members are responsible for choosing participants and industries for their local MID day.

  • The local consortium member collects and evaluates the suitability of the problems.
  • Participants: students from high-school, university students, PhD-students and senior researchers are invited to participate.
  • High-school teachers are invited to participate in a pre- or post- MID day, aiming to work with how to instruct students to work on problems similar to the proposed ones.

Implementation phase: The MID day is implemented.

Evaluation phase:

  • Evaluation and summary of the local day, performed by the local consortium member.
  • Evaluation and summary of all performed MID days performed by the project consortium. Discussion and negotiation between all consortium members.

Elements of Innovation: The innovation of IO2 is found in the fact that it actively invites industries to propose problems to be worked on by school gifted students. Another innovation is also found through offering the possibility for mathematicians of various levels(schools, universities or even industry) to work together. The procedure is new as a model aiming to increase interest in mathematics and science for all stakeholders involved. The application-driven school materials in natural sciences and industry products related in new and is part of the evolution of Education plans leading to Education 3.0 and even Education 4.0.

Expected Impact and transferability potential: Pupils will be directly involved as they will be the main actors in all events. Teachers will be the trainers, facilitators and co-creators in the learning process of the gifted pupils but teachers will also be trained through this process.

Pupils will increase their interest and motivation to continue to study mathematics intensive educations and teachers will increase the level of real life-related problems in their teaching. The European cooperation secures the possibility to transfer the concept from one country to another. In addition, cooperation makes it possible to do some adjustment that might be needed due to cultural differences and traditions.

The consortium has participant organizations representing, pupils, teacher, teacher trainers, ICT experts and this will ensure a good number of involvement of the target groups. School partners but also participating universities with specific school networks establishments will provide direct communication with pupils and a ground for pilot testing of the relevant outputs.


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