The sigma prize winners for 2014 have just been announced as:

Innovation of the Year:  Shazia Ahmed and Sarah Honeychurch (University of Glasgow)

Student of the Year: George Hudson (Coventry University)

In relation to these prizes, mathematics and statistics support refers to activities that support and enhance students’ learning of these subjects (as they occur in many disciplines) in higher education.

The Innovation of the Year prize is awarded to a project that has made a significant and demonstrable difference to mathematics/statistics support at its home institution.  In addition, the initiative has the potential to be replicated or developed at other institutions.  In the case of the winning innovation, Shazia Ahmed and Sarah Waterhouse have developed, moderated and evaluated an innovative form of Virtual Peer Assisted Learning (VPAL) using Facebook for students at the University of Glasgow.  By providing a place for students to talk and interact, and having minimal but supportive tutor presence, students were encouraged to organise their own study groups and access Student Learning Service support; once established, the groups became virtually self-supporting.

The Student of the Year prize is awarded to a student involved in mathematics and statistics support at their home institution, who could demonstrate a positive impact on the support experience through, for instance, direct contact with students or resource development.  In the case of the winning student, it was clear to the Panel that George Hudson more than met this requirement.  With an increasing number of students from disciplines other than STEM students patronising the Maths Support Centre (MSC) at Coventry University, George is its first student proctor from outside the Faculty of Engineering and Computing.  As a student from the Business, Environment and Society (BES) Faculty, as well as the Bloomberg BAT Campus Ambassador and Treasurer of the Investment Society, George has established an excellent relationship with those departments in the BES Faculty with mathematics in their degree courses. He was able to successfully promote MSC services to fellow BES students and he identified free slots in their timetables, co-ordinating his hours of tutoring duty in the MSC to be on hand when they attended.

The awards will be presented at a ceremony to be held at the CETL-MSOR 2014 conference in Cardiff on 8th September 2014.

Nominations were scrutinised against the criteria by a Panel consisting of Dr Chetna Patel (University of Sheffield) and Dr Rob Wilson (Cardiff University). The Panel individually assessed and ranked each application. The individual rankings were aggregated to provide a short list of overall winners in each category. David Bowers, the chair of the sigma Network, chaired a final Award Panel to consider the shortlisted entries.      

Further information can be obtained from sigma Assistant Director, Moira Petrie (m.g.petrie@lboro.ac.uk).