Maastricht University teaches most of its programmes in English, and three in four of its students come from outside the Netherlands. At the School of Business and Economics (SBE), that means first-year students arrive with very different maths backgrounds. The university closes the gap in two steps: preparatory summer courses in Sowiso, and the OMPT online maths admission test for students who still have to meet the maths requirement.
Dirk Tempelaar teaches introductory mathematics and statistics at SBE and at University College Maastricht (UCM). He coordinates the preparatory maths and statistics summer courses for SBE and pre-med students. Dirk helped create the first materials Sowiso used, was one of its first users, and works with the platform in his own lessons too.
The challenge: an international intake with very different maths backgrounds
A quarter of Maastricht University’s students are Dutch. The other 75% come from other countries, and the students who enter SBE show large differences in previous education. The summer courses exist to even out that prior mathematical proficiency, so that everyone starts on equal footing.
Equal footing matters because of the way Maastricht teaches. In problem-based learning, students work in small groups of 12 to 14, coached by a tutor. The tutor supports, but the students are expected to collaborate, brainstorm and work out solutions themselves.
“To solve these problems, it’s essential that all students can be active, so instructors need everyone to have similar prior knowledge. It’s too difficult if there are students whose level is higher because then others won’t be able to participate in the discussions.”
Over the years, Dirk and his colleagues saw the problem of students with a maths deficiency grow stronger and stronger. And the worry is not limited to the weakest students.
“There is concern about the level of students leaving high school. The idea is that their mastery is decreasing. Many of our students participate in the summer courses, so it’s not only the students with less knowledge but also more proficient students. What we see is that they are concerned about being able to pass the first difficult courses.”
The solution: practice in Sowiso, proof with OMPT
Summer courses that students can take from anywhere
Dirk and his colleagues started organising summer courses 20 years ago, for students with a maths deficiency and for students who want to refresh their skills before their programme starts. Since 2015, the courses have run in Sowiso.
There are several. International Business and International Economics require an intermediate maths level, and that is the biggest summer course: 827 students enrolled in a single summer. The more advanced courses are Analytics for Econometrics and Business Analytics (224 students) and Business Engineering (85). Students work through them online, whenever and wherever they like. For Dirk, that and the curriculum behind the content are what make Sowiso fit.
“Since our students are from all over the world, they need a flexible course they can take from home at any time. It is a must that they can do it online with the flexibility that Sowiso provides. Additionally, Sowiso’s content is based initially on teaching mathematics in the Netherlands. We need international students to level up with the Dutch high school curriculum because Dutch law requires that students can continue from what they learned in high school. We need a tool that covers these topics, which is an advantage of Sowiso.”
Students can practise as much as they want and at their own pace. Exercises are graded automatically, so all that practice does not add to the teachers’ workload.
An admission test for students who need to prove their level
The summer courses got their name because most students used to take them in the summer after leaving high school. As the deficiency problem grew, SBE started asking students to complete the course and then pass an in-house exam in Sowiso. Today, applicants take OMPT, the online maths admission test, instead.
That has created two groups. Admissible students without a deficiency mostly take the course over the summer. A large group of students with a maths deficiency works on it through winter and spring and then sits OMPT in the summer. By November, 85 students were already working towards the following summer’s OMPT exam.
SBE uses two versions of the test. Applicants for the International Business, Economics and Business Economics, and Fiscal Economics bachelor’s programmes take OMPT-A. Applicants for Econometrics and Operations Research, Business Analytics and Business Engineering take OMPT-B.
The result: intermediate-level students who perform like advanced ones
Dirk has researched the effect of teaching with Sowiso, and the summer courses come out well.
“What we see is that generally, students who participate in the summer course do better than students that don’t participate in them. The effect is substantial. The problem is that from a research point of view, you can not assume that the whole effect is by Sowiso or by the summer course because you need to correct for, what we call in research, the confounding variables.”
Part of the gain is simply timing. Students no longer have to catch up on maths while settling into a new country.
“Mathematics is for certain a difficult course for students doing a business or economics programme, and these summer courses greatly help students to spread out their efforts. Instead of following an intensive eight-week course and at the same time settling in a new country and new town, they can use parts of the summer to go through them.”
The most important confounding variable is motivation: students who take a summer course are probably more motivated to begin with. Dirk corrected for that. Wiskunde A and Wiskunde B are the intermediate and advanced maths tracks in Dutch secondary school.
← Back to all stories“After statistically modelling student motivation as such confounding factor in the analysis of the impact of taking our summer course, we found that students who have Wiskunde A level, which is the intermediate level, are doing as well after taking the summer course as students having Wiskunde B, which is the advanced level. But about half of the effect is based on the summer course, and the other half is based on confounding factors, like differences in motivations and other factors.”
