December 2011 - Issue #14
IT tools give maths pizzazz
Story by Alexandra Roginski
View articles in related topics: Mathematics, Education, Information Technology
Key points
- Interactive teaching gadgets are improving student experiences of mathematics courses.
- Students can access maths help online, anywhere and anytime, under an international, Swinburne-led initiative.
When seeking evidence of how new technologies enrich the learning experience, look no further than the gratitude of Richard Grzebieta, a first-year mechatronics and robotics student at Swinburne University of Technology.
Mr Grzebieta began his university course this year after a decade working in the electronics industry. “In the first unit of maths I got completely lost,” he says. “Most people had a Year 12 background, whereas I did that 10 years ago and couldn’t remember a single thing.”
In the second week of first semester, Mr Grzebieta found himself in the Swinburne Maths and Stats Help (MASH) centre, a drop-in support unit for students in the Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences.
Led by Dr Birgit Loch, senior lecturer in maths education, the MASH centre is staffed by a roster of five tutors. MASH also has an online facility with tools for students to access anywhere, anytime.
Among Dr Loch’s teaching innovations are MathsCasts, short video screen grabs of a mathematical problem being solved by a lecturer as he or she narrates each step. Annotations, scribbled with a stylus onto a tablet PC screen, appear around the problem. It is like displaying the sound, vision and notes from a lecture all at once.
MathsCasts is a research collaboration led by Swinburne, with the University of Limerick in Ireland, and Loughborough University in the UK. Thanks to the MathsCast online portal, launched this year, students can see particularly difficult topics, such as differential equations, tackled from multiple angles.
Mr Grzebieta has found MathsCasts a perfect complement to the minimum of four hours he spends in the MASH centre each week.
“Every time I get stuck on something, I’ll go back to a MathsCast, and it makes it a bit easier to go through questions out of a book,” he says. This semester, not only does he find maths easier to grasp, but he has even started enjoying it.
A timely end to ‘death by slideshow’
In addition to leading MASH and working to integrate technology into education, Dr Loch teaches the first-year maths foundation subjects for Swinburne’s Bachelor of Engineering degrees.
Swinburne is supporting Dr Loch’s direction with $140,000 to source new equipment and train interested staff from across the Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences in how they can boost their teaching with new technologies.
She is continually testing and evaluating new ways to engage students and improve maths skills with new technologies.
By passing her wireless tablet to students and asking them to solve the problem, the answer appears on the lecture theatre’s main screen.
“It’s more dynamic because the students are contributing. It’s not one person who knows it all. You actually have a discussion,” Dr Loch says. “You might go off on a tangent, but maybe that’s exactly what’s needed. If you’ve got PowerPoint slides only, then you can’t adjust. This, instead, gives you flexibility.”
Dr Loch and colleagues adopting her techniques upload annotated slides onto the web after class, enabling students to focus on the mathematical process rather than frantically scribbling down every detail in the lecture.
“We are also trialling pen screens installed in lecture theatres. They allow electronic writing on the existing lecture room computer,” Dr Loch says.
A simple but effective way to check if students are following a topic is with audience response systems, or ‘clickers’. As in a game show, each student is given a small handset into which they enter a response to a multiple-choice question. “If they’re not getting the right answer, you can hardly ignore it – you have to explain the topic again. And if they’re all understanding it, why not just move on?”
At the end of the day, Dr Loch stresses that anything is better than a static lecture. “If a lecturer experiments with a tablet PC and ends up using clickers then great, they’ve done something different, hopefully improved engagement of students, and made their classes more active.”
MathsCasts: www.swinburne.edu.au/mathscasts Swinburne offers the Graduate Certificate in Educational Technologies for primary and secondary teachers wanting to incorporate educational technologies into their teaching. For details call 1300 275 794
The teaching tech-scape
MathsCasts: ‘Screen casts’ of lecturers solving mathematical problems, available to students and the general public through the Swinburne website and iTunesU. “We want students to be able to get help immediately without necessarily coming to us. They can get it wherever they are,” Dr Birgit Loch says.
Tablet PC room: A facility in Swinburne’s new Advanced Technology Centre equipped with 20 tablet PCs. Students answer a problem on their tablet, with all responses displayed anonymously on the main screen for the class to discuss.
Clickers: Audience response systems. Students enter their response to a multiple-choice question into a handheld device, informing the lecturer how many grasp the topic.
Pen screens: Fixed tablet screens on which lecturers can annotate slides without turning their backs to students.
Number whiz
Dr Loch jokes that overhead projectors are the perfect stand on which to rest her tablet computer when she teaches. In her eyes, these projectors are in the same league of soporific teaching tools as electronic slides being narrated in a monotone.
Although she began her career with a PhD in mathematics, Dr Loch – who joined Swinburne in 2010 – has shifted her research focus to how new technologies enhance maths education.
She was an early adopter of tablet PC technology, first using one in class when she joined the University of Southern Queensland in 2005.
One of the tablet’s strongest advantages, she says, is that tutors and lecturers can jot down notes and annotate slides without turning their backs to students, as they would if writing on a whiteboard.
- Swinburne offers the Graduate Certificate in Educational Technologies for primary and secondary teachers wanting to incorporate educational technologies into their teaching.
