ePUMP

This project is under development and has not been released.

(Update: the interview videos are currently being used for APS100H.)

With the support of the Education Technology Office, the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science (FASE) and the Department of Mathematics of the Faculty of Arts & Science (FAS) have been working together since 2019 to create ePUMP: the online Preparation for University Mathematics Program.

ePUMP's predecessor, The Preparation for University Mathematics Program (PUMP) has been offered to incoming students at the University of Toronto for decades, as a way for students to strengthen and expand the mathematical knowledge needed to thrive in first-year math courses at the university level. While successfully serving many incoming UofT students, ePUMP's goal is to extend the course to all who are interested in taking it. ePUMP is an enhanced and modernized version of PUMP, designed specifically for accessibility. As an open, editable, and publicly available resource across Ontario, ePUMP will have characteristics which will allow it to reach many more individuals and be used by other institutions in a customizable format.

The ePUMP structure will allow students and instructors to access individual components in an as-needed basis ("Need to brush up on your logarithms?  Click here!"), but will treat each subject as a whole, rather than a set of separate and unrelated mini-topics.  The materials will include "learning how to learn" components tailored to the learning of mathematics. There will also be math-in-action videos in which researchers are interviewed about their use of the mathematics found in the ePUMP modules.  Finally, while there are already significant materials already available on "how to do stuff" mathematically, the ePUMP materials will have a mathematical rigour to them which will include "why things work," "why things were created in this way," and address some natural questions that students often have.

The project is funded through UofT's Learning & Education Advancement Fund (LEAF), by the Dean's Strategic Fund from FASE, and by additional funds from the FAS Dean's office.

ePump is being developed by a cross-departmental team, with professors from FASE and the Department of Mathematics contributing to the overall vision of the project and the more tangibly, to the project assets (e.g., videos, examples, problem sets, quizzes).  Like many good ideas, multiple people were thinking of this and in 2019 two teams began to work independently on LEAF proposals on the topic: from FASE, Mikhail Burke (Dean’s Advisor on Black Inclusivity Initiatives and Student Inclusion & Transition Mentor) and Shai Cohen (Assistant Professor, the Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education and Practice (ISTEP)) and from FAS, Sarah Mayes-Tang (Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics). Joining forces, they won a LEAF Impact grant and began work.  The team brought in two of the key players in the PUMP program: Ana De Luca (a TA for PUMP for many years) and Sa'diyya Hendrickson (a TA and instructor for PUMP since 2010).  In March 2021, Sarah Mayes-Tang moved on to other projects and handed the ePUMP baton to Mary Pugh (Professor, Department of Mathematics).  Mary Pugh has extensive teaching experience in both FAS and FASE; some of her MAT188 lecture videos have gone viral.

See also the blog post: ePump: Patching the Leak in the STEM Pipeline

Learning Outcomes

Coming soon!