As the type of student entering university changes, we are obliged as educators to adapt our teaching styles to suit the new demographic. With many students unable to physically attend lectures and with the internet being accessible to the vast majority of students, the need for flexibility has become paramount. In a direct response to this need, mathematics lecturers at James Cook University created screencasts for a number of their subjects, both as lecture replacement and as supplement. These screencasts involve screen and audio capture of handwritten, typed or powerpoint lectures created using a tablet computer. This article discusses student opinion on the effectiveness of the screencasts used in teaching mathematics at James Cook University. Examining the students responses to this relatively new technology raises questions on the viability of the traditional face to face lecture and the role academics will play in a technology driven tertiary sector.

Mathematics education in Queensland seems to be on a neverending downwards spiral. This is the opinion of the majority of the staff in the School of Maths and Physics at James Cook University. Over recent years the staff in our School have struggled to output students at a standard third year tertiary mathematics level. There are two reasons for this: firstly the intake is from a less well prepared student body and secondly, perhaps more critically, the indicators used to measure the ability of secondary school leavers are most often useless. It is at this lower end where decisions about which subjects a student is to pursue are paramount, both in the short term (success in a semester) and the long term (completion of a degree). In this article

The use of screencasting at James Cook University (jcu) has increased heavily over the last five years, and we have extended our resources to include complete sets of live lecture recordings captured via annotations and commentary on a tablet computer. At jcu, screencasting is now used extensively in mathematics subjects at all year levels both as lecture support and lecture replacement for entire subjects. The aim of these screencasts was to create greater flexibility for our students, engage them through a familiar medium and to encourage them to work outside of the usual lecture and tutorial times. However, many lecturers have expressed concern that increased flexibility will result in a reduction in lecture and tutorial attendance. In order to address this concern, a study was carried out on the second semester first year engineering mathematics class at jcu. A survey was used to determine the students' perspective of the impact of screencasting

Over recent years there has been a lot of emphasis placed on the drop in standards of students entering first year university mathematics in Australia. The tertiary sector struggles to handle this increasing gap and, with pressure to maintain student numbers, a common response has been to reduce the difficulty level of the first year mathematics courses. This approach has had limited success, with students passing first year mathematics but lacking preparation for the higher years. If realistic change is to be made in bridging this gap, then the problem needs to be addressed at both the tertiary and secondary level. We investigate the successes and potential failures of running a tertiary level mathematics course over five years at four high schools in North Queensland. This has been a genuine team approach by both university academics and high school mathematics teachers and forged solid links between the sectors. The presence of academics in the high school classrooms as well as students and teachers attending university activities led to a greater understanding of perceived difficulties on