Blogging from The Tenth Southern Hemisphere Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics

Dr Anthony Morphett – image taken from here.

Live blogging: Note that these are notes I’ve taken live, but will edit this today into a more readable format. I want to put this up straight away though to see if I have any obvious misunderstanding. Equations will also be put into more readable format ASAP.

Dr Morphett will be talking about GeoGebra. Downloadable as a desktop or tablet application. Very fast development of applets (average 18.2 hours development time per applet – not including design). Purely html for adding to the web – makes it very easy. However, there are performance issues and it’s still somewhat immature.

Talking about work developed with Sharon Gunn and Robert Maillardet. Applets from the project can be found here.

Similar to Mathematica demonstrations from the previous post.

From 2013, colleagues from Melbourne university have been developing a suite of interactive applets for maths and stats. Help to develop conceptual understanding. Goegreba is the open-source software that they’ve been using: Dynamical geometry package, but now more…including stats and much more.

What effect can this have on the wider department – colleagues, etc?

Talking about the project as a  whole.

The rationale was that it’s now easy to develop interactive applets – no specialised programmers needed (in contrast to a few years back). GeoGebra is one of many options.

Brings the development to the reach of everyday academics. There’s great potential to enhance teaching and learning at relatively low cost.

In particular it’s easy to produce applets which are targeted and tailored to particular needs.

Targeted: At specific learning and teaching needs – eg. students often have problems with sequences and series – get confused between the two. This is the sort of thing that this project was aimed at helping with. Applets developed to target these needs.

Tailored: Built specifically for the particular context – eg. using the same notation as in the lecture slides. Often something you find online will present things with different terminology or order of introduction.

The project was: “Conceptual learning with interactive applets”

GeoGebra works by construction, rather than with textual code. Minimal complexity needed to build advanced applets. Everything gets updated as a student plays with points, etc.

Project is in the evaluation stage now.

Big Picture Outcomes:

  • Engage colleagues in the design and feedback processes.
  • Try to prompt professional development/reflection: Constructive rather than confrontational.

The approach to designing the applets

For instance convergence of sequence. Set up a rule for the sequence – you can see the definition of convergence on the screen – you can change \epsilon, to see what’s happening about points being different by some fixed \epsilon.

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Partitioning of variability in regression

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  • Seek feedback from relevant teaching staff, prompted with key questions:
  • Design and develop new applets to meet specific needs
  • Discussed with interested teaching staff
  1. What terminology/notation should be used?
  2. What key examples should be supported?
  3. Any additional functionality needed?
  • Revise applets, repeat feedback cycle
  • Workshops with academic staff

Outcomes:

  • 29 applets produced for first and second year students
  • Used in lectures in demonstration mode, and in labs, consultations, assessment tasks
  • Sample online tutorials, quizzes, supporting notes.
  • Preliminary data is positive: A good student learning experience
  • Built up a pool of expertise among academics/graduate students
  • Professional development:
  • 1) Reflection on teaching via the feedback/design cycle –
  • 2) collaboration
  • 3) subtle, non-confrontational: What can we do to make your teaching better?

Evaluation:

  • Some potential questions for ongoing evaluation
  • Motivations for students use of applets – task-oriented?
  • Staff motivation for involvement? Some had a pedagogical impetus, some wanted to reduce technical obstacles (cf. java applets), others wanted to enhance their subject delivery.
  • Hope that these motivations feed into student learning and professional development

 

How clear is this post?