Events
Scholarship Exchange Webinar
| Date: | Wednesday 22 October 2025 12:00 - 13:00  |
| Location: | Online |
Title: ‘Beyond the Formula’: Revolutionising mathematics education by embedding ethics and sustainability through staff-student co-creation
Speaker: Dr Rehan Shah, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Mathematics and Engineering Education, SEMS
Abstract Brief:
Traditional teaching of mathematics in STEM disciplines at university level has largely comprised of memorisation exercises and repeated application of formulae, with minimal emphasis given to aspects of ethics and sustainability. Over the last 10 years it has become increasingly obvious, and increasingly pressing, that STEM students should be taught some ethical and sustainability awareness so as to realise the impact of their work. This extends even to those more highly trained, including graduate professionals and academic staff. But what should we be teaching our students, and how should we do it?
This project is dedicated to understanding the need for the consideration of wider societal aspects within mathematics-based problems and to outlining some of the ways in which we can incorporate the teaching of ethics and sustainability within mathematics-focused modules at the undergraduate level. Using the principle of student-staff co-creation, the aim is to co-design and compile (with students playing a pivotal role) a comprehensive teaching resource toolkit, both for educators and students, comprising varied examples of problems across different mathematical topics with key ethical and sustainability aspects embedded within them for use by academics within their own teaching practice. The project shares outputs and results obtained from the implementation of these resources over the past 3 years across two large, core first and second-year undergraduate applied mathematics modules (approx 850 students in total) led by Dr Shah, while also showcasing both the wider impact of this work beyond QMUL.
| People: | Rehan SHAH |
| Research Centre: | Research in Engineering and Materials Education |