Making Higher Mathematics Accessible: Experience from Riga Technical University

Riga Technical University is the only technical university in Latvia and the first technical university in the Baltic countries with long lasting traditions, advanced teaching methods and around 15 000 students from Latvia and abroad. Number of high school graduates in Latvia is decreasing every year as well as their interest in STEM subjects during high school. As a result the university is facing insufficient level of student knowledge in mathematics which is one of core subjects in engineering sciences. This aspect leads to high dropout rate during the first year of studies. In order to overcome these problems we have analyzed data regarding student high school leaving exam marks and first semester math grades and decided upon a plan for helping weakest students to catch up with Higher Mathematics courses. Actions we are taking include conducting simple video lectures which are available online for free and compensative courses right before first semester in topics which are found to be most challenging for students in previous teaching experience. The paper covers educational data analytics, teaching strategies and lessons learned from evaluation of the results in Riga Technical University