The 2025 International Meeting of the STACK Community at Durham, UK

Report author: Maciej Matuszewski

Conference Committee: Maciej Matuszewski, Sam Fearn, Clare Wallace, Dan Evans, Stephen Harrap, Fox Radjen

The 2025 International Meeting of the STACK Community took place on April 7-9 at Durham University in the United Kingdom. Durham has been using STACK to great effect since 2019 so it was a wonderful experience to be able to contribute back to the community by hosting this event. The academic programme took place in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, while attendee accommodation was provided in the nearby Grey College.

Continuing the tradition of previous STACK conferences, this was a lively and well attended event – with over 90 people (including invited speakers) from all over the world attending in person, and about another 30 attending online. An introduction was provided by Professor Simon Gardiner, Deputy Executive Dean (Education) in the Faculty of Science at Durham University, who stressed the importance of innovation in higher eudcation. The event included over 60 items on its programme, including hour long plenaries, 20 minute talks, 5 minute lightning talks, workshops and network meetings. Social activities included visits to Durham’s stunning Cathedral (a UNESCO World Heritage site) and a drinks reception in Durham Castle. Pictures from the conference, and conference posters, can be found at maths.dur.ac.uk/STACK25.

Attendance photo
Conference photo

Plenary Talks

The conference was headlined two external plenary speakers presenting hour long talks.

Professor Meike Akveld of ETH Zürich presented a talk entitled “On-line assessment - an opportunity to rethink our teaching” where she discussed how replacing elements of traditional lectures with STACK questions has enabled an improvement and transformation of teaching methodology, optimising student engagement.

Professor Sally Jordan of the Open University (UK) presented a talk entitled “Maximising the benefits: Making our (e)-assessment better”, focusing on careful assessment design, innovative pedagogic uses of e-assessment, and honest evaluation. The talk provided an optimistic outlook on how new technological developments can improve the student experience as long as they are introduced carefully.

Two additional plenary talks were also given.

Dr Clare Wallace, assisted by Dr Sam Fearn (both of Durham University) and their final year undergraduate students, presented an hour long internal plenary on the innovative use of STACK as a research topic for final year project students. The talk discussed both the practicalities of learning how to use STACK, but also the theoretical pedagogical background of the benefits and challenges of using automated e-assessment.

Dr Michael Obiero Oyengo and Zachariah Mbasu presented a short online talk on developing a digital textbook for Junior Secondary Schools in Kenya to adress issues with currently inadequate and inaccurate teaching materials. The talk introduced innovative ways of integrating STACK into PreTeXt.

Conference Parallel Talks

The rest of the conference was divided into grouped sessions, mostly presented in two parallel streams with about 50 individual talks and lightning talks. The groups were as follows: * Use of Graphics (2 sessions) These talks discussed how graphics, primarily using JSXGraph, could be used to enhance STACK questions. Topics included discussions of how interactive graphics could be used as an input by students to answer a questions, how graphics could be used to visualise complex mathematical concepts, and how graphics could be used in more applied questions, for example in electrical engineering courses. * Expanding Uses of STACK (2 sessions) These talks discussed how STACK could be used in areas in which it has previously been less used. This included its use in advanced pure maths courses, in particular for assessing proof comprehension and writing, but also how STACK can be localised for languages other than English. * Networks, Communities and Repositories (1 session) These talks discussed the communities that have built around STACK, including reports from previous conferences, and an update on the HELM workbook. * Case Studies (4 sessions) These talks provided updates on the introduction and expansion of use of STACK at institutions around the world. These included a range of different types of higher education courses, but also increasingly the introduction of STACK in secondary education. * AI (1 session) These talks discussed how the STACK community can deal with the rise of generative AI. This included discussions of how to write cheating resistant questions, and how to use AI together with STACK. * Analysing student responses (1 session) These talks discussed how the analytic functions of STACK, including tracing how student answers progressed through the potential response trees, could be used to get further insight into how students use STACK, and their learning process more generally. This included talks on how this information could be utilised. * Technical Aspects of STACK (1 session) These talks discussed technical developments and new features of STACK. * Localisation and International Use of STACK (1 session) These talks provided further detail on how STACK can be used for non English speaking students.

Conference proceedings are currently being edited. Videos of recorded sessions have been distributed to participants. Some speakers have given permission for videos of their talks to be made public. These are currently being edited.

Workshops

We hosted a number of workshops and discussion sessions covering various aspects of STACK.

Juma Zevick began the conference with the traditional introductory workshop for new STACK users, where attendees could get the chance to write their very first STACK question. Two subsequent workshops introduced participants to the use of JSXGraph (Carsten Miller and Alfred Wasserman) and GeoGebra (Guido Pinkernell), with the GeoGebra workshop also particularly focusing on its use in secondary schools. Sam Fearn presented an introductory workshop on how to use Git (with a particular focus on updating STACK documentation) and Andreas Steiger presented a workshop on how to use Zulip to host discussions within the STACK community, with a further discussion on how the experience of using the Zulip STACK community can be improved, and how to encourage more people to join.

Network Meetings

The now traditional meeting of the STACK Professionals Network, aimed at question authors and lecturers and teaching using STACK in their institutions, was hosted by Konstantina Zerva. Notes from this meeting can be found here. Individuals interested in joining this network can find more infomration here.

George Kinnear also a meeting of the recently formed STACK Researchers Network – which aims to bring together pedagogical researchers looking at how STACK can be used to improve education. Various potential areas of research were discussed, including the possiblity of international collaboration on research into how students use STACK feedback. Individuals interested in joining this network can find more information here.

Conclusions

The conference made it clear that interest in STACK is continuing to grow, with more institutions introducing it in a wider range of contexts. New features being added to STACK continue to make it a more attractive offering, with members of the STACK community continuing to use it in innovative ways, including very impressive analysis and visualisation of how students answer questions, which can be used to further understand how we can improve our pedagogical offering. Support is continuing to be developed for people using STACK for research, as well as for educators who are joining the community from areas other than Mathematics Departments at Universities.

Conference Participants

  • Meike Akveld - ETH Zürich
  • Mike Altieri - OTH Amberg-Weiden
  • Holly Barker - University of Manchester
  • Rosie Benton - MEI
  • Catherine Berry - MEI
  • Thorsten Bücking - h_da Darmstadt
  • María Ángeles Castro López - University of Alicante
  • Igor Chernyavsky - University of Manchester
  • Andrey Chesnokov - Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  • Siri Chongchitnan - University of Warwick
  • Miriam Clincy - Hochschule Esslingen, Germany
  • Jesús Copado Mejías - SURLABS
  • Francesco Cosentino - University of Leeds
  • Michael Crocco - Monash University
  • Mary David - INNODEMS
  • Ben Davies - University of Southampton
  • Saúl Díaz - SURLABS
  • Motognon Wastalas d'Assise Dogbalou - University of Trieste
  • Eimear Dunne - Durham University
  • Dan Evans - Durham University
  • Edmund Farrow - University of Edinburgh
  • Sam Fearn - Durham University
  • Matthias Geissbühler - BMS Zurich
  • Björn Gerß - Lutherschule Hannover
  • Sophie Goldie - MEI
  • Marcus Green - Catalyst IT Europe Ltd
  • Matti Harjula - Aalto University
  • Stephen Harrap - Durham University
  • Anja Haußen - Fachhochschule Erfurt
  • Saburo Higuchi - Ryukoku University
  • Oleg Boruch Ioffe - h² – Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal; Fachbereich Wasser, Umwelt, Bau und Sicherheit
  • George Ionita - ETH Zürich and University of Bern, Switzerland
  • Sally Jordan - The Open University
  • Aviva Kaiser - OTH Amberg-Weiden
  • Michael Kallweit - Ruhr University Bochum
  • Masumi Kameda - Sanyo-Onoda City University (Up to March 2023)
  • Mitsuru Kawazoe - Osaka Metropolitan University
  • George Kinnear - The University of Edinburgh
  • Nixson Kiplagat
  • Johannes Knaut - Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Amberg-Weiden
  • Laura Kobel-Keller - ETH Zürich
  • Martin Kraska - Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences
  • Blanca Kraus - Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Amberg-Weiden
  • Oksana Labanova - TTK University of Applied Sciences
  • Jonas Lache - Hochschule Ruhr West
  • Henry Lähteenmäki - South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences
  • Karin Landenfeld - Hamburg University of Applied Sciences
  • Florian Lindemann - TU Muenchen
  • Tim Lowe - The Open University
  • Christine Lux - Rosenheim University of Applied Sciences
  • Joe Marshall - Durham University
  • Jamie Mason - Durham University
  • Maciej Matuszewski - Durham University
  • Hayden Maudsley-Barton - University of Edinburgh
  • George Mbaeyi - University of Leeds
  • Daniel Meissner - University of Muenster
  • Salvatore Mercuri - The University of Edinburgh
  • Svetlana Mihhailova - TTK University of Applied Sciences
  • Carsten Miller - University of Bayreuth
  • Raphael Müller - Paderborn University
  • Yasuyuki Nakamura - Nagoya University
  • Emmaculate Odhiambo - INNODEMS
  • Steven O'Hagan - The University of Edinburgh
  • Georg Osang - IDEMS International
  • Michael Oyengo - Maseno University
  • Vesna Perisic - University of Southampton
  • Marc Peterfi - Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Mannheim
  • Guido Pinkernell - University of Education
  • Mojca Premuš - Faculty for Civil and Geodetic Engineering, University of Ljubljana
  • Jonas Priebe - University of Applied Sciences Hamburg
  • Fox Radjen - Durham University
  • Wigand Rathmann - FAU Department Mathematik
  • Birte Reich - Paderborn University
  • Ruth Reynolds - University College London
  • Jun Saito - Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine
  • Christopher Sangwin - University of Edinburgh
  • Sergio Santiago - SURLABS
  • Hendrikje Schmidtpott-Schulz
  • Benjamin Herbert Schulz-Rosenberger - Ruhr-University Bochum
  • Kinga Sipos - Mathematical Institute, University of Bern
  • Frauke Sprengel - Hannover University of applied sciences and arts
  • Colin Steele - University of Manchester
  • Andreas Steiger - ETH Zürich
  • Simon Taylor - University of Edinburgh
  • Daniele Turchetti - Durham University
  • Godfrey Wabwire - INNODEMS
  • Clare Wallace - Durham University
  • Alfred Wassermann - University of Bayreuth
  • Miriam Weigel - Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Mannheim
  • Wolfgang Weigl - OTH Amberg-Weiden
  • Yvonne Wolf - Hochschule Hannover
  • Fumiko Yasuno - National Institute for Educational Policy Research
  • Kentaro Yoshitomi - Osaka Metropolitan University
  • Konstantina Zerva - The University of Edinburgh
  • Juma Zevick - University of Trieste