081 – The Second African STACK Conference

[00:00:00] Santiago: Hi and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I am Santiago Borio, an Impact Activation Fellow, and I’m here with David Stern, one of the founding directors of IDEMS. Hi David.

[00:00:17] David: Hi Santiago, really nice to be catching up after I’ve just had a couple of weeks away.

[00:00:23] Santiago: Yeah we caught up and did an episode last week, but I believe you want to talk about the STACK Conference, the African STACK Conference, which started while we discussed in episode 79.

[00:00:38] David: Absolutely. And let’s be clear, this is something where you were very involved actually basically running together with Mike, of course, the first African STACK Conference. So this is a nice opportunity for you as well to actually hear what’s happened and what the progress is for the second edition.

[00:00:57] Santiago: Yes, and I was meant to be there, but my health didn’t allow it. I was there at the start of the organisation of the conference. So I helped in the initial steps.

[00:01:09] David: And with the initial confusion, because of course this was supposed to be in Ethiopia.

[00:01:14] Santiago: This was supposed to be in Ethiopia. There are a number of reasons why it didn’t happen in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, the social and political situation in Ethiopia didn’t allow it.

[00:01:27] David: It was mainly that actually international visitors could not have gone to the university where it was hosted. It’s sort of advised against travel there at this point in time. And so it was decided that to keep the momentum, we should give the opportunity to another university or another host institution to take it on. And we were fortunate that the Technical University of Kenya rose to the challenge. And I must say they did rise to the challenge well.

[00:01:56] Santiago: I’m glad to hear. But I just wanted to point out, working in challenging environments sometimes brings these sort of problems and it’s part of the nature of the work that we do.

[00:02:10] David: Absolutely, and I think that the community itself, which is really behind this, has come out of Kenya, and so there is a slight problem that was brought up that is this an African STACK community or is it a Kenyan STACK community, as Kenya has now hosted the first two. But with that slight question, other than that, everything about this event was so impressive and went so well.

[00:02:36] Santiago: Let me point out, however, that there’s at least one university in Tanzania, that’s been very strongly involved with STACK as well.

[00:02:48] David: For the first time, they now have three participants. And there was more who were wanting to come. Idrissa, who of course we’ve known a long time and who has been amazing, but has been very much a lone champion of this in his context.

Now actually had three participants and they are really seriously working towards a workshop next year. And they have taken the commitment of aiming for the 2026 conference. And so the 2025 conference, I’m afraid the Ethiopian team said we want it, even if it means we have to have it in Addis, the next conference is planned for Ethiopia.

[00:03:26] Santiago: Oh, wonderful. And this is, Idrissa Said Amour.

[00:03:31] David: Yes, University of Dar es Salaam, and doing incredible work, and very impressive. He is working as we would expect European colleagues to be working, very much taking on the authoring himself, doing a lot individually, which is all the more impressive because of his teaching load and actually the context within which he’s working. But really the team that he brought in has been growing in interesting ways.

[00:03:57] Santiago: And of course, it’s worth pointing out that he’s done it with huge challenges. We are still hosting courses for him in our servers because he hasn’t managed to get Moodle set up for the university.

[00:04:15] David: Yes, the challenges he’s facing, of course have been huge and we’ve been able to play a small role in supporting that, but I think compared to every other partner we’ve had on this, the independence he’s had it’s just phenomenal.

[00:04:31] Santiago: Yeah. And there’s also Ethiopia, particularly the team at Bahir Dar University, they’ve been making huge efforts to get STACK implemented. The local challenges prevented it in some ways, and of course there’s the University of Namibia.

[00:04:48] David: Let’s be clear, in the Ethiopian context, they are using it in Bahir Dar. And they have had efforts, which were much more for this to spread across other universities. And that’s where they have been real challenges.

But I believe within the use within Bahir Dar, there are now, there’s real efforts. And this is where for them, hosting the conference next year, this is when we will hear about what’s happening because they were unable to even travel this year to join us. They were invited, they were funded, but just the situation with the academic calendar meant that they couldn’t get released.

And so it’ll be really exciting to hear what’s happening on the ground. They have, I believe, made progress. There was a presentation of some of the work, which is the work that we had worked with them on the previous year coming out, but it does seem that there is real momentum there still. So that is something which we really look forward to next year, finding out more.

[00:05:44] Santiago: Great. We look forward to hearing about that in the next conference, which hopefully I’ll be able to attend this time.

[00:05:51] David: Yes. And you mentioned Namibia and Martin, one of the sort of key people that was indeed there for the AIM workshop and unfortunately was not able to stay for the STACK conference itself. But, again, as you say, there’s been progress there. There’s an initial course, I believe, and they are really engaged in the process.

[00:06:11] Santiago: Yes, there is one course that they’re developing with the support of our colleagues in INNODEMS.

[00:06:19] David: Yes.

[00:06:21] Santiago: And it’s a course that is done by not just mathematics students, but any student doing any science related course.

[00:06:31] David: Yeah.

[00:06:31] Santiago: But anyway, this was about the conference. Tell me about it.

[00:06:37] David: To me, I’ve got to start with TUK itself, the Technical University of Kenya. Their engagement and just presence at the conference far exceeded any expectations I had. Really, I must admit, I confess that I was a bit nervous when TUK were chosen, because there had been an engaged small team who were interested. But unlike Masinde Muliro, which held the first conference, they hadn’t institutionalised it in the same way.

But what I found with the actual conference was that actually, although it wasn’t necessarily institutionalised at this point, the engagement of the staff in this and what they were trying to do, we had somebody from physics who was there, we had the key person in the e-learning attend the whole event and really engage in it, as well as so many of the staff across mathematics, statistics. You could see this real sense of energy as a community, you know, hosting us, but also engaged in taking up STACK in their teaching and learning.

[00:07:47] Santiago: I want to highlight as well the organising team from TUK, it was the first time they organised any sort of event like this, so it must have been a huge learning experience for them as well.

[00:08:03] David: They did just brilliantly. Now, of course, Mike Obiero played a wonderful role in actually bringing this together, bringing the community in from different places. And there were members of Masinde Muliro, of Kissii University, one of the key people who I was very impressed with was a lady from the TVETS, who works with the Polytechnics, and she suddenly said, Okay, I see how this can help not just me, but the Polytechnics in Kenya and the TVET institutions because, they have a real need where this sort of assessment will really help to improve the learning in those institutions.

And so that was a whole nother direction that this is going. There were a whole range of other universities who had never been engaged before, who turned up and were wanting to get STACK into their teaching and learning.

And generally, if you take the Kenyan context, this felt very different even to last year, just in terms of the diversity of participants, and how the momentum feels much more local. In fact, the key discussion point was sustainability.

[00:09:11] Santiago: So many questions come out, but I just wanted to take a step back and clarify what TVET is.

[00:09:18] David: Oh, yes, thank you. The TVET institutions in Kenya, these are the technical training institutions. And while there are, tens of now public universities, there are literally a few hundred technical and vocational training facilities. And those are really powerful because they’re taking a much wider range of the population. Your universities take your elite students, this is a sort of small percentage, definitely less than 20 percent of the population. Whereas most other students would be going through the technical and vocational training.

[00:09:57] Santiago: So the scale could be quite impressive.

[00:10:01] David: Absolutely. The scale could be quite impressive. And of course, one of the things which was pointed out is that the curriculum is more standardised than at universities. So actually, once you get the courses which are adapted to the TVET curricula, then there’s less adaptation which is needed to go from one institution to another. So that’s something where, again, there’s more institutions, they’re a little bit more standardised in different ways, and there’s this real opportunity to support at scale.

The importance of this was really highlighted. We had a very energetic lady her name was Kate. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch the other names. But she was fantastic, and she was just driving the energy for this and really got us all enthusiastic about the potential of STACK for this sort of technical and vocational training.

[00:10:55] Santiago: And how about international participants? I hear there were a few non African participants at least.

[00:11:01] David: Absolutely. We had in some sense ourselves as the usual suspects, and Franca from Caltech tied it in with this AIM workshop.

[00:11:09] Santiago: Franca is the person you interviewed in our last episode.

[00:11:13] David: Absolutely, Franca Hoffmann. And yeah, we had a very interesting, wide ranging interview on this while we were together in Kenya. And I’m sure we will have a follow up interview, which is maybe a little bit more focused on a specific topic in the future.

She’s a professor at Caltech and she was there. She’d been involved in African education, many different facets of it, for a long time, and she’s been introduced to STACK through her Africa work. But one of the exciting things is part of her motivation for being at the conference was she is actually bringing STACK back in to the education at Caltech.

And the fact that we were there, the fact that Chris Sangwin and the team from Edinburgh University were well represented, meant that this was really an opportunity for her to engage and make sure that she’s prepared for us working together on integrating STACK at Caltech.

[00:12:06] Santiago: And of course Chris Sangwin is a professor of mathematics education at the University of Edinburgh and the creator of STACK, and we also have an episode where you interviewed him.

[00:12:17] David: Absolutely. This was his second time to Africa, he was attracted to the first African STACK conference and he came again to the second one with our knowledge transfer partnership associate, Sal Mercuri, who was there as well, presenting or sharing some of the work that he’s been doing, extending STACK functionality, creating new possibilities for proof based questions, or questions around proof.

There was also a representative from Germany of a project where they’re actually building a database around STACK questions and open database around STACK questions. And that was really interesting and exciting because the PhD student who came in representing that project was saying actually there’s things that we can contribute, but there’s also learnings we can take from the Kenyan team and how they’re managing the open database.

And so that led to this beautiful exchange and really interesting shared learning.

[00:13:11] Santiago: Sorry, it’s open question bank. We haven’t yet got it into a proper database or any form of organised structure.

[00:13:20] David: And that was part of the discussions that came out, and this was recognised as one of the real important community initiatives, which I think is needed.

And maybe I should go one step further there that the value of the INNODEMS team and the strength of the INODEMS team was really recognised. And one of the things that came out from a number of the institutions that have benefited from that support is how sustainable is it? Is it still going to be there? How is it going to still be there? And so this sort of came out and this was really powerful as part of the discussions.

[00:13:53] Santiago: And that is a real, important question because, of course, at least three of the four professionals that we have are moving on to doing a master’s program very soon. But they’re still keen to keep working on STACK.

[00:14:12] David: Yes, and one of the things that is really interesting that came out of this is that, actually, some of them, as they’re moving on into their master’s programs, aren’t going to leave their role. They’re going to make the role the nature of their study. So they’re going to be studying the things they’re working on.

And so this also came out very strongly, and that was a really powerful component where actually of the four people who were the key part of that team, all four were wanting to move on into sort of further education and three out of the four are likely to be doing Kenyan degrees part time so that they can continue in their roles and be supported to actually then be studying the work they’re doing.

And the fourth, it isn’t guaranteed yet, but has potentially an opportunity to go to the U. S. But again, the aim of that is exactly to be able to study the work that she’s been part of and how she’s going to actually take this forward in other contexts. And so it’s really exciting.

[00:15:13] Santiago: And of course, we have two other team members who were crucial in terms of quality control and brought in a huge amount of skills because they had more experience than the recent graduates, the STACK professionals presenting. And they have moved on and gone to a PhD in Italy.

[00:15:34] David: Absolutely, and they were both present and they were both there and they were very well received in the conference. Their support for the community, I should single out, I think, Juma particularly because within the community, he was able to present himself as being the person people can go to, to actually do educational research on what they’re doing while they’re implementing and actually supporting that process. This was all really very interesting and very exciting.

[00:16:03] Santiago: That’s great to hear.

[00:16:05] David: I should mention Wastalas very briefly as well, because again, his role is very much more towards looking at how Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence could be used to serve the community. And that was also really extremely well received by the community.

[00:16:21] Santiago: I might be mistaken, but one of the key aspects of his research is how we can find out how to provide better feedback to questions through machine learning processes.

[00:16:34] David: That’s his starting point for what he’s now trying to investigate. And of course, one of the big challenges we’re getting towards that is how do you get the data to be able to train the models? And that’s a whole community issue. And it’s about, again, engaging the community and getting the data together in such a way that you can feed this in. So there’s some wonderful strands of work.

And this is where it was such an enriching experience that the community coming together as it did was just, yeah, really great. And I haven’t even mentioned the Rwanda link. We now have two people from Rwanda who were there, looking to take this back into universities in Rwanda. And really, one of the things right at the beginning of the week was that, one of the lecturers who says, I’m going to go back to Rwanda, so I need more support than everyone else.

I think he did feel supported. And hopefully, the two of them are in a position to now try and take things back, engage in their institutions, and see how this could actually be taken back to Rwanda, which I think if you remember, Rwanda was included in the very early efforts but it never really took off. And so to now have this new young energy looking to say, we see how this is needed in our context, we want to be the drivers making this work and really using it to help our students.

[00:17:50] Santiago: Great. So we mentioned a lot of people, tell me about the conference itself. Last year the first four days were split into morning presentations and afternoon workshops and then the fifth day was panel discussion with the key people. Did you follow the same structure this year?

[00:18:07] David: Almost exactly the same structure. It went down very well. That combination of the morning presentations and the afternoon workshops was really appreciated. People felt they made progress in a whole different set of areas in the afternoons. And the final day, it was very interesting that it actually, if you remember last year, the final day was very much about setting up this community.

Whereas the final day this year was a bit different. It was about where’s the community going and how can it be supported? So actually the presence of the international collaborators as part of the panel discussion, saying, this is what we can contribute, this is how we can support you, was part of that discussion.

And maybe I’ll come back to the sustainability element, that there was very much this sense that we need to have things within the institutions. And I think one of the things that came out quite strongly on the last day was the opportunity and the potential to be thinking across institutions and to be looking at sustainability beyond just sustainability of an institution, but sustainability within a context.

And in Kenya, I think this came out rather strongly with the fact that, really the centre of gravity has moved in terms of STACK within Kenya. And the presence of the Open University and its role within this was also a very interesting twist, I’d argue, where they really are now, I think, going to become a central actor in this space.

[00:19:41] Santiago: Again, the Open University is the new university that has been set up. It’s the Open University of Kenya, not the UK Open University, which is usually referred to as simply the Open University. So this is the Open University of Kenya which is a year old, I think?

[00:20:01] David: Basically, yes. I don’t know if it’s had its one year anniversary yet or not, but it’s around a year old. It was set up last year. And it’s very interesting, very challenging, the tasks they’re taking on. But there’s real potential that they could be filling a gap in Kenyan education, where there’s a real need. And we’re hoping to collaborate with them, maybe even helping them to set up a new master’s program and really exciting initiatives they’re looking to take forward.

And at the heart of this is the fact that they are embracing, of course STACK, but more generally, electronic delivery because they’re reaching people everywhere in Kenya.

[00:20:42] Santiago: Great. And I’m sure we will have an episode solely about the Open University or maybe you can interview Mike on that. We’ll see.

[00:20:49] David: And of course one of the main organisers from TUK has now moved to the Open University of Kenya on secondment, I believe. And she’s really become a driving force there. And so the collaborations between TUK and the Open University were also great to see.

[00:21:04] Santiago: I think she’s so wonderful, you must mention her by name.

[00:21:08] David: Beth, oh Beth is wonderful. One of the things which I think came out, because of course she was there at the previous week as well, is that she’s really been able to provide guidance, I think, to many of the international collaborators on what the nature of support and the reality of these electronic assessment systems are within the local context, because she’s got experience with so many different tools and has been able to articulate elements of the need that she’s facing.

[00:21:43] Santiago: And she’s also a key member of the…

[00:21:48] David: Kenyan Math Society.

[00:21:49] Santiago: So she has the experience of working across universities as well.

[00:21:54] David: Absolutely, with, of course, Mike Obiero, the two of them are part of that leadership team and were central in this and also central in the fact that the Kenyan Math Society really owned this event in a way that, you know, last year they were there, they were present, but this year it was very much the Kenyan Math Society’s event. And you could feel that sense of ownership growing as the Kenyan Math Society is revived, and they are reviving it with such energy, it’s great.

[00:22:23] Santiago: And this is Beth Kiratu. Let’s mention her properly, Dr. Beth Kiratu. She’s wonderful.

[00:22:30] David: Absolutely.

[00:22:31] Santiago: And I look forward to hearing what she manages to achieve in the near future.

[00:22:38] David: Absolutely.

[00:22:40] Santiago: One of my worries, David, was that quite a few participants this year were also in the previous one.

[00:22:47] David: The previous week, the AIM workshop.

[00:22:50] Santiago: No. In the previous conference.

[00:22:52] David: Oh yes, the conference last year, yes.

[00:22:54] Santiago: The conference last year. I was a bit worried about how the workshops would work, because the nature of the workshop last year was to explore the open question banks that we developed over the years and see how they could start creating courses. What happened at the workshop? Because, of course, that repetition might not have been useful, or it might have been…

[00:23:18] David: The repetition, actually, there were sufficient new people that repetition was extremely valuable and useful. However, the workshops themselves took a much more individual flavour. We had many more facilitators who could facilitate different aspects.

And so once people were grouped into the sort of things they were wanting, there was authoring support for people who were technically more advanced. There was people setting up and developing their courses for people who were at that stage. And so they really did take a more individual flavour.

And broadly, they were just every afternoon, lots of people working away on things which they cared about. And so it was not maybe as structured as last year, but it was certainly productive. And I felt from where I was standing, there was a lot of productive energy being spent and a lot of people came out with things where they felt they were ready to go.

[00:24:14] Santiago: Great. That’s really good to hear.

[00:24:17] David: I should finish with one element, because I’m conscious we’re running out of time, but I can’t finish this without saying this. One of my big points, which I think came out, and this is something I think, as we discuss next year’s workshop, the point which I think was a real learning point. And of course Juma, who we’ve mentioned before, is now doing his PhD in Trieste, he gave a presentation on the last day about some work which he did which came out of the SAGE Foundation and a hackathon they ran where they helped Juma to create visualisations which can help support lecturers to be able to monitor what’s happening and what the students are doing. And this really brought home to me that actually this is the point where really effort is needed.

And I’m delighted that Juma has taken up this task, supported by so many other people. But for us to be really learning along with lecturers from the students, to be able to improve the question banks. This is the point where there’s real opportunity and need for community effort. And I think that’s something where I’m really excited to see what emerges over the next year.

It’s looking like a Moodle plugin related to STACK data is going to be published, hopefully within the next six months, maybe a year, that will actually then make it easier for lecturers to follow what their students are doing on STACK questions specifically, and to be able to really get a sense of the data coming out of this for themselves, but also to share it back in ways which help the improvement of the material.

So there’s some really interesting opportunities there, which are evolving. This of course relates very much to the work that Wastalas wants as well. So there’s all sorts of opportunities emerging, and it’s just exciting to see how this is coming out of a real need. There’s no big funding behind this yet. We might hope in the future that people see the value, and that this actually is something which is driven forward. But at the moment, this is just emerging because of the needs. And in the African context, most specifically right now in the Kenyan context, the impact that this is already having is just amazing to hear.

And we heard this time and time again when people were presenting, about what’s actually happening, how this is changing student learning. There was no talk which competed with Colette’s talk from last year, which I think you will remember, which gave this amazing evidence of impact on this complex analysis course. Given quite simply, but a very powerful set of data to see and to see what’s happening.

There were some former students present who are now presenting. They really reinforced the impact the system is having on student learning.

[00:27:14] Santiago: Great. And I think we cannot finish this without mentioning our supporters for this huge effort. Danilo Lewanski from Trieste University, obviously. He managed to get funding from the European Research Council and from France, the Institute of Theoretical Physics, the Center of National Scientific Research, I think it is, or Research in Science, the name is actually in French and I don’t know French, sorry, the Centre for Atomic Energy, the AIM workshop last week allowed us to have quite a few people as well.

[00:27:55] David: And Franca Hoffmann, I was going to say that the Caltech support, the AIM workshop, one of the reasons that this was dovetailed on is that actually a number of the regional participants who attended the AIM workshop were then able to extend their stay and have their flights covered, essentially, they only had a single trip. And so that was very powerful and useful. And Franca was able to then actually, as an organiser of both events, was able to support some of the participants in this related to the work that she’s doing. And so it’s been just a wonderful set of supporters in so many different ways.

Of course IDEMS has supported itself, but in relatively small ways. It’s just that consistent growing of the community, which is so powerful to see.

[00:28:42] Santiago: The Kenya Maths Society facilitating discounts for participants. The Technical University of Kenya itself, TUK, hosting it and supporting financially in some ways as well, I believe.

[00:28:55] David: I believe the venue was entirely provided by TUK, and it was a perfect venue, it suited the needs of the conference so well.

[00:29:01] Santiago: And this is a real evidence of the international effort that is being put into this.

[00:29:10] David: And I’d really like to emphasise how, although there was this sort of international support, these were all very little bits of support. And this event was really driven by the local community, with support from outside admirers, I would argue, who have been aiming to just help that community grow. It’s been such a powerful experience.

[00:29:32] Santiago: Let’s not forget INNODEMS as well.

[00:29:35] David: Their support for the Kenyan community and beyond was so appreciated and recognized throughout the event. The main concern was what would happen if this support went away? Now this was one of the main concerns that people recognized that they couldn’t carry on without this support. And that is something where that was really valued, but also it was part of the sort of sustainability concerns.

[00:30:01] Santiago: Why don’t we have another episode just on that?

[00:30:05] David: Sounds good. Thank you.

[00:30:08] Santiago: Thank you, David.