METAL News

METAL Launch - May 2008
We are very pleased to announce the launch of the METAL project site, which now includes all project resources.

A number of additions and improvements have been made to the site, many of which have been informed by our dissemination and feedback workshops held at institutions around the UK during 2007. The new site includes:

• The addition of film series 4 on Linear Programming, and series 5 on Differentiation and Integration.
• A 'learning pathway' from our film pages, suggesting related practice materials for the Question Bank.
• A quicker download facility for the Question Bank materials, allowing you to quickly download an entire subject set at once.
• Improved features on the Question Bank, including a populated 'additional materials' feature, linking to other resources, including recommended METAL films.
• Improved accessibility on the film streaming and downloads.
• The option to view an animation separately, or to stream / download it as part of the related film as one file.
• New 'case studies' resource.

A huge thank you to everyone involved! 

Econ Tools Project - April 2008 - March 2009
Nottingham Trent University, in collaboration with the partners of the three other FDTL5 projects, are directing a further stage of their economics teaching and learning projects. These four projects; FEELE (Economics Experiments); Applying WinEcon; METAL; and Embedding Threshold Concepts, are joining forces to carry on a further year of dissemination and embedding activity aimed at UK Universities.

A series of targeted presentations are planned during 2008, introducing academics to these powerful learning and teaching tools. If you, or your department are interested in arranging a visit from one of our presentation team please contact the project coordinator, Angela Scott.

More information about this project will be added here. 

New publication - April 2008

Written by the Director of METAL and the editor of the METAL Teaching and Learning Guides, we're pleased to advertise this forthcoming publication, due for launch in March 2008. Rebecca Taylor and Simon Hawkins,  Mathematics for Economics and Business   McGraw Hill (ISBN: 10-007710786-1) More information is available on the McGraw Hill website here.

Project workshops
During July to December 2007 the METAL team organised and facilitated a programme of workshops around the UK. These workshops gave delegates the opportunity to have a guided hands-on introduction to the online project resources whilst they were being developed. They also allowed the project team to talk with lecturers about how the resources might be used in classroom situations or to support learning.

Information from the workshops proved valuable in helping the team improve and finalise the resources, and will inform our end of project report.

Other events
After the launch of the project the team will still disseminate METAL at key events, which will be advertised here.