The School of Mathematics and Physics (SMP) held its first Learning and Teaching Seminar of AY26/27 on 23 September, featuring three AY25/26 School Teaching Grant (STG) projects. Organised and chaired by Dr. Ruonan Zhang, Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching and Head of the Department of Foundational Mathematics, the seminar featured presentations by Dr. Shiyan Guo from the Department of Foundational Mathematics, Dr. Min Wen from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Dr. Xi Chen from the Department of Physics.
Dr. Ruonan Zhang said that following the tradition, the first School Learning and Teaching Seminar of each academic year demonstrated the previous year's STG projects. Established by the School, STG supports staff in exploring innovative teaching, with three projects completed in AY25/26.
Dr. Shiyan Guo: expanding the MTH106 question bank
Dr. Shiyan Guo presented a project to improve the fairness and accuracy of MTH106 assessment, reduce the risk of question leakage and cheating, and make questions more flexible and reusable. Based on 28 parent questions, the project expanded the question bank from 103 to more than 2,000 questions, which will be imported into the Learning Mall Core. The work has also been developed into a paper and will be submitted to a 2026 conference on mathematics teaching reform and innovation in higher education for the new era.
Dr. Min Wen: bringing real data into Operations Research coursework
Dr. Min Wen introduced a case database developed for MTH203 Introduction to Operations Research. Dr.awing on published benchmark instances, public industrial datasets, and research project data, the database provides students with real-world cases and larger-scale problems, with supporting information on each case's context, data fields, and possible modelling approaches. Following the pilot, more students worked with real data and larger-scale problems. The database will next be developed for use in MTH443.
Dr. Xi Chen: AI agent supports SURF project supervision
Dr. Xi Chen introduced SurfMate, an AI agent developed to support the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). It integrates a knowledge base, workflows, a fixed Q&A library, and external plugins to support literature interpretation, project and poster requirements, tailored CV generation, and interview booking, while tracking team tasks and progress.
The project has resulted in an article published by the Centre for Educational Innovation and Excellence at Learning Mall and an invited talk at the School of Physics, Renmin University of China.
The seminar concluded with an update on the AY26/27 STG projects. The School will continue the Learning and Teaching Seminar Series in the new academic year, providing a platform for staff members to share teaching practices and experiences.
By Qinru Liu
Photos courtesy of Yao Jia
