Past Events

Dialogue with Industry

SofTMech successfully organised the "Dialogue with Industry" event on Friday 24th November. There were approximately 40 participants, with some of those from industries and charities. An EPSRC representative also attended the event. This has forged many new ideas for future collaborations.

Future Events

Meeting of the LMS network

The Integrable Systems group will host a meeting of the LMS network in Glasgow on Thursday 22nd and Friday 23rd March 2018, which will be devoted to “Frobenius structures and relations”.

Quantum integrability and quantum Schubert calculus

The Theo Murphy international scientific meeting, organised by Dr Christian Korff and Professor Vassily Gorbounov (Aberdeen), will be held at The Royal Society at Chicheley Hall, Buckinghamshire from Monday 11th to Wednesday 13th June 2018, inclusive.

Overview

There is a new direction in Schubert calculus, which links the Yang-Baxter equation, the central equation in quantum integrable systems, to problems in representation theory that have their origin in enumerative geometry. This will be a cross-disciplinary meeting that brings together researchers of different career stages and from different areas in mathematics for a mix of talks and focused discussion rounds.

More information on the schedule of talks and speakers will be available soon. Speaker abstracts will be available closer to the meeting date. 

Annual Learning & Teaching Conference 2018

The 11th Annual University of Glasgow Learning and Teaching Conference will take place on Wednesday 28th and Thursday 29th March 2018. The title of this year’s Conference is ‘Learning Spaces’, with a focus on ‘Visualisation in Learning and Teaching’ on the first day.

Dr Andrew Wilson has been invited to present at the conference and will present his work on “Embedding Play in Higher Education” highlighting the success of the use of playful activities and games in student learning. The abstract is included below.

Abstract

Wisdom begins in wonder or so Socrates teaches — however embedding wonder in the fast-paced environment of Higher Education can be challenging. This session will discuss the benefits and challenges of cultivating playfulness in small-group settings on courses with a large teaching team through traditionally styled (and low-tech) games. The student interactions exist in a game dynamic that is 'separate from the real world' [Moseley and Whitton, 2015]. Time spent in class maximises the focus on learning and, by in-game reflection on the dynamics of the playful interactions, is both a spring-board for improvised directed discussions of learning outcomes, and a formative assessment tool to personalise the class to the needs of the individual and group. In addition to showing extremely high levels of student satisfaction, the creation of safe, playful and failure-friendly learning spaces gently shifts time in class towards a student-focused and student-centred experience at a pace defined by the group.

This presentation will expose innovative use of games in the promotion of active cooperative learning in the mathematics classroom. The author will discuss the planning and preparation involved in creating and leading a session built around the effective use of games to develop wonder. Through sharing student and tutor feedback and observations, the impact of this introduction to the classroom on student engagement and future teaching methodologies will be considered. Participants will leave this session with the tools to take forward the lessons learnt and embed playfulness in their teaching through the use of games. With little adaptation, the author believes these innovations can be successfully applied across other disciplinary contexts.

References: Whitton, N. and Moseley, A. eds., 2012. Using games to enhance learning and teaching: a beginner's guide. Routledge. Vancouver

Please note that the call for abstracts is now closed. Registration will open in the New Year.

First published: 19 December 2017

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