Citizen Maths is a free online maths course, aimed at adults in or out of work, who want to brush up their maths. The presentation covers some of the thinking behind the course and how employers, further education colleges and other adult education organisations can get involved.

2. Funded by the Ufi Charitable Trust
Developed by Calderdale College, with the UCL
Institute of Education, OCR, and with advice
from Google
Course content produced by DESQ
Copyright © Calderdale College 2014, 2015
licensed under Creative Commons

3. How can an
open online course
help you
support adults learning
Level 2 maths?
www.citizenmaths.com
@citizenmaths

4. What we will cover today
✓ The course – rationale, approach, style,
what it feels like
✓ Who it’s for – what motivates them?
✓ Experience and feedback so far
✓ Questions – how to make this relevant
to adult learners
✓ Routes to getting involved

5. A dramatic improvement in
the UK population's
mastery of basic numeracy
and statistics needs to
happen if the country is to
take advantage of the data
revolution now sweeping
the globe.
British Academy
report Count Us
In: Quantitative
skills for a new
generation.
June 2015
http://www.britac.ac.uk/
news/news.cfm/newsid/1285

6. Why Citizen Maths?
○Engage people in familiar activities to reveal the
‘maths inside’ and give access to its power
○OECD 2013 PIAAC Skills Report*: 1 in 3 of the
UK’s adult population – 10+ million? – have a
level of mathematical capability that would
enable them to benefit from Citizen Maths
○Skills for citizenship
* http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/surveyofadultskills.htm

7. Without scientific
understanding
we don’t run the
government, the
government runs us
Carl Sagan
Astronomer &
cosmologist,
in his last
interview in
1996

8. Learning results from what the
student does and thinks and
only from what the student
does and thinks. The teacher
can advance learning only by
influencing what the student
does to learn.
Herbert Simon
Political scientist,
economist,
sociologist,
psychologist and
computer scientist
portrait by Richard Rappaport

9. Using four main types of content
Talking to camera Writing to camera
Screencasts Our own applets (for learners & in screencasts)
https://www.youtube.com/user/CitizenMaths/
https://www.citizenmaths.com/#how-does-it-work

10. Powerful Ideas
Learners engage in real-life problems in such a
way that the power of mathematics is revealed
Open means
○free at the point of use
○free to copy and reuse in other contexts
Sustainable
Long term costs per learner are on a par with
buying a single newspaper
What is Citizen Maths?

11. Powerful Idea = Proportion
Powerful– because it underpins lots of different aspects of maths including:
• Fractions
• Percentage
• Decimals
• Ratios
In action – through:
• Mixing – proportions of ingredients in a recipe
• Sharing – mortgage payments in a shared house
• Comparing – multi-buy offers in a supermarket
• Trading off – liquid height in different sized containers
• Scaling – resizing a picture on a smartphone

12. Powerful Idea = Uncertainty
Powerful – because it underpins:
• Probability
• Risk
• Odds
• Large and small scale effects
In action – through:
• Making decisions — value of insurance, risk comparisons
• Judging — meaning of cancer screening results
• Gaming — appreciating odds in roulette, dice, Grand National
• Modelling — the uncertain spread of an infectious disease

13. Powerful Idea = Representation
Powerful – because it underpins:
• Data
• Graphs
• Distributions
• Sampling and bias
In action – through:
• Analysing — polling data and sample sizes
• Interpreting charts — to see how your household income
relates to the population as a whole
• Comparing — average battery life on different mobile phones
• Interpreting data — to make sense of opinion polls
• Inferring — conclusions from graphs and charts

14. Powerful Idea = Pattern
Powerful – because it underpins:
• Repetition
• Frequency
• Symmetry
• Algorithms
In action – through:
• Appreciating — mirror and rotational symmetry in nature
• Tiling — arranging different shapes in repeating patterns
• Constructing — a shape to be repeated in a wallpaper design
• Coding — repeating sections in a knitting pattern or in a
computer program

15. Powerful Idea = Measurement
Powerful – because it underpins:
• Scale
• Dimensions
• Conversion
• Relationships
In action – through:
• Estimating — the number of people in a crowd
• Checking — the dispensing rate for an amount of medication
• Converting — between currencies, imperial and metric
• Calculating — the price of cloth or wallpaper by the metre
• Quantifying — the amount of alcohol consumed in various
beverages

17. Flyers produced by Calderdale College

18. Who is Citizen Maths for?
adults with the
motivation, enough
time, some
basic maths know-how, and
basic web know-how and access

19. Very simple self-assessment process before proceeding to register

20. What problems does this solve?
✓Do you know adult learners who might value
doing a course like Citizen Maths?
✓What distinguishes those that might from those
that wouldn’t?
demographics
role & situation
interests

21. How is Citizen Maths working?
Learners like it
○ safe and risk-free
○ real life
○ properly “taught”
○ plenty of control
○ enthusiasm for video format and simple
quizzes
Adult-maths educators can see the point of it –
some having become strong advocates

22. How is Citizen Maths working?
Support costs per learner are low
Learners would like
linking to one of more qualifications or badging
Organisations would like
aggregate data sharing on course progress

23. What learners say about Citizen Maths
"I am really enjoying the course, I have recently started a new work area within the
office where I need to use maths and I struggle with basic math which is why I
decided to use this course..... I think the videos and sums are very clear and clearly
explained, I don't feel rushed, it's a nice pace. I do feel as though I'm learning and
feel great when I am able to answer the questions with confidence after the lesson.
I really hope there are other phases released in the future."
“I work in a work based learning environment, where maths and English are a core
focus in a wide range of training programmes. I used citizen maths to brush up my
own skills, taking into consideration whether citizen maths would be appropriate for
our students. The instructions were easy to follow, tutorials were very useful and
reinforcement used effectively. It is a programme I would consider using for our
learners."
“I am a mature student who have been taught Maths in my young days and at
college on an access course but found the way I was taught difficult. This course
delivered an ease and quality of the teaching material which allowed me to get the
concept being taught very quickly. I was very very surprised and the fact you can go
back and refresh your learning anytime is amazing. It has replaced my fear of Maths
with a love of it.”

24. What Citizen Maths has taught us
1.There is demand for open online courses at
Level 1/2/3
2.Age is no barrier
3.Third party involvement matters
4.A registration “hurdle”, if small and well
designed, can work well

25. What Citizen Maths has taught us #2
Design and organisation is complicated:
○Stuff has to happen that is at the boundary -
between software, content development,
learning design, IPR, video production, maths
education
○Video is inflexible and fiddly/costly to revise
○For educators, many of the disciplines and
approach involved are unfamiliar.

26. Who is Citizen Maths working with?
Workplace partners
○unionlearn
○large employers
Learning partners
○Further Education colleges
○adult and community education

27. Your involvement
1.We have a web form for potential partners to
indicate roughly how many learners they might
refer: http://goo.gl/8dIKGb
2.Discussions between Citizen Maths and
individual organisations
3.Conversations taking place at collective levels
4.Using Citizen Maths as a resource

29. Questions from us
✓For educational and other organisations
what problems does this solve?
how best to express this?
what’s the best way to reach them, or to help them reach
the course?
✓For individuals
what problems does this solve?
how best to express this?
what’s the best way to reach them, or to help them reach
the course?

30. Next steps
“Reference group” – for us to bounce ideas off, get
guidance from. If willing to be part of this, tell us
today or by email to admin@citizenmaths.com.
[We will not overburden you.]
If your organisation or project might be interested
in working with Citizen Maths, please provide
tentative numbers via the web form
http://goo.gl/8dIKGb .