Rhodes University bridges mathematical skills gaps and increases student confidence in first-year chemistry
Rhodes University implemented a scientific numeracy-focused Smart Worksheet to address significant mathematical skills gaps and low confidence among its diverse first-year chemistry students. Used as both a diagnostic and learning support tool, the worksheet provided immediate feedback and practice.
Students who engaged with the Smart Worksheet multiple times showed a significant improvement in scores and performed better on subsequent assessments, demonstrating the resource's value in bridging proficiency gaps and boosting student confidence.
The Challenge:
Levelling the playing field in a diverse student cohort
Rhodes University’s first-year chemistry course serves a large cohort of students, spanning multiple degree subjects. A major challenge facing the department is the extraordinary diversity of the student cohort, which includes students from over ten different language backgrounds and a large variety of socio-economic backgrounds.
Many students in South Africa enter university from under-resourced schooling backgrounds, resulting in poor preparation for higher-level study and low confidence in foundational skills. Lecturers at Rhodes noted that students specifically struggled to apply basic numeracy skills within a chemistry context, such as converting units or understanding ratios. With a curriculum already full of content, there was limited time to re-teach these foundational concepts in class to level the playing field.
The Solution:
Diagnostic assessment, immediate feedback and personalised practise with Smart Worksheets
Joyce Sewry worked with the LearnSci team to implement a scientific numeracy-focused Smart Worksheet into her first-year chemistry class. She initiated a research project to explore the value of the Smart Worksheet in both identifying mathematical proficiency gaps, and as a learning support tool to potentially address these gaps - the first application of its kind in South Africa.
The scientific numeracy Smart Worksheet was customised to align with the course’s curriculum, while addressing six key numeracy skills required for chemistry, such as scientific units, graphs, and rearranging and solving equations. Introduced at the start of the academic year, the worksheet functioned as both a diagnostic tool to highlight weaknesses, and a learning tool to help strengthen confidence and bridge proficiency gaps.
Students were given three attempts to complete the worksheet. This structure allowed students to work at their own pace, receiving immediate feedback as well as the option to auto-solve any questions to help them understand how to reach the right answer. Along with randomised data in each attempt, this ensured that students could practise calculations and build confidence in a safe, supportive environment before any high-stakes assessments.
The Results:
Clear identification of numeracy gaps and significant skills improvement
LearnSci Analytics was used to explore the usage and performance of the Smart Worksheet, and a questionnaire was distributed to gain insight into students’ perceptions of the resource. Analysis of the student data revealed a highly statistically significant improvement in performance for students who engaged with the Smart Worksheet more than once. The average score rose from 70.6% on the first attempt to 82.0% on the second attempt - an increase of 11.4 percentage points. This suggests that the immediate feedback provided by the Smart Worksheet helped students effectively learn from their mistakes and improve their numeracy skills independently.
11.4%
increase in scores
8.2/10
Average rating
The auto-solve feature was also used significantly less during second attempts (5.2% vs 10.5% on first attempts), indicating that students were able to solve problems on their own that they had previously found too difficult. Students who attempted the Smart Worksheet multiple times also went on to perform better in the subsequent end-of-module assessment, than those who only attempted once. This increase suggests that the repeated practice had a positive impact on students’ skill development and confidence.
Analytics also successfully revealed gaps in cohort knowledge; performance data showed that students struggled particularly with identifying outliers in graphs, determining slope and y-intercepts of scatter plots, and calculating medians, variance and standard deviations. Identifying strengths and weaknesses in these areas allows for the development of future support and targeted teaching strategies.
Building on the quantitative data, feedback from the students themselves was significantly positive. They reported that the Smart Worksheet helped them identify their own strengths and weaknesses, and succeed in specific areas such as significant figures. They clearly recognised the value of the resource - interestingly, the section of the worksheet the students found most helpful was ‘scientific units’, despite it being one of the areas they struggled with the most.
Joyce Sewry’s work implementing this solution has received widespread recognition. The project won a LearnSci Teaching Innovation Award in 2025, acknowledging Ms. Sewry’s contribution to excellence in teaching.
Beyond this, the results of this research have been published in the South African Journal of Science in 2025, titled "Smart Worksheets to Probe and Support Scientific Numeracy Proficiency of First-Year Chemistry Students”. The article was nominated for the journal’s Outstanding Article Award in 2025, highlighting the impact and quality of the research.