Engaging with mathematics during Covid-19: students aged 16+ responding to a mathematics ‘Box Set’ of enrichment video materials

This paper reports on a mathematics outreach programme, ‘Bridging KS5 to University’, which offered video materials to students aged 16+ during the school closures in spring/summer 2020 in Wales. The 13 videos, provided by the Further Mathematics Support Programme in Wales, ranging from 20 to 50 min long, included activities and exercises addressing mathematical topics outside the school curriculum, and engaging with them can thus be seen as enrichment activities. The study is primarily concerned with the ways in which students engaged with the materials and what motivated them to begin watching them and then continue to watch them. Interviews with students found that the students’ behavioural and emotional engagement with the materials was much as might have been expected, but that their cognitive engagement was perhaps higher than expected. Considerations for developing further similar enrichment programmes for use in times of crisis, including equity issues, as well as for up-cycling the bridging programme for ‘normal’ times are also discussed.