Given the current circumstances with regard to COVID-19, we have decided to offer free licenses to all higher education institutions in order to help them have an easier transition to distance and online learning. For those of you who aren’t familiar with our tool, we are an e-learning platform for mathematics and statistics in higher education. This article serves as an overview of the ways in which we can help you with your transition to online learning. Okay, enough background information, let’s jump in:
At the risk of generalization, every math/stats classroom contains at least one of these four elements:
I want to touch upon each of these elements and explain how our tool can help move it online. As a side note, for all these elements there are free tools out there who do it to varying degrees of success. But rather than talk about tools that I am only familiar with on a surface level, I thought I could bring you more value by talking about the tool I know best.
Don’t worry, I will keep it short and straight to the point.
This part is especially valuable for teachers who mainly rely on covering new topics by talking through them while writing out examples on the black/white board.
When it comes to theory we have online course modules that cover the following topics on a university/college level: Basic Math, Calculus, Calculus for Social Sciences, Statistics, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations and Financial Arithmetic. For a more detailed breakdown of the content of these courses and a live preview, you can head over to our open courses.
Teachers can either use these courses as is, use specific content from these courses or create their own materials in our authoring environment. By using these online modules or creating your own, teachers can cover theory and students can consume it from the safety of their homes. And to make up for the lack of face-to-face interaction, the online theory can be enriched by interactive graphs, video, animations, color changes, definitions on hover, short questions between explanations, and pop-up blocks with additional information (just to name a few).
When it comes to practicing math exercises, all of our content comes with practice material.
Each question can be endlessly reused as practice material because all the variables in our exercises are randomised. Essentially, what this means is that you can choose any mathematical question and then with a click of a button, your students can have infinite variations on the base question to practice at home.
With the help of our learning analytics, you will also be able to track the performance and progress of all of your students. This way you can still keep your students accountable for their work even though you are not seeing them on a weekly basis.
In a traditional classroom, having students do practice exercises in class allows teachers to provide instant feedback. By using our automated feedback functionality and online forum, teachers can replicate this interaction online.
The automated feedback provides tailored feedback and hints to every student answer input. However, automated feedback can never replace the more nuanced insights of an actual math teacher. This is where the forum comes in.
The forum allows students to comment on any practice material if they have any concerns or problems regarding it. It’s also a place for any general questions/comments regarding the course. We suggest teachers set up online office hours during which they will answer all the forum questions.
When it comes to testing, with the help of our testing module, you will be able to administer tests remotely without having to worry about your student’s integrity during the test.
The questions for the tests can be randomized so that every student has a set of questions with unique variables. Pair that with screen security, that ensures students are not able to navigate to a different tab to look up answers to the question, and you have the closest thing to a remote examination hall.
We decided to offer our platform + course licenses, including support, for free for the rest of the academic year for those who want to move their education online. If you want us to set you up with a free license to help you deliver online classes in the short term, just send us a message at info@sowiso.com.
Apart from that, I would like to just add:
Thank you to everyone involved in higher education, who have taken up the challenge of not allowing COVID-19 to get in the way of their students’ education.
Wishing you health on behalf of everyone at SOWISO,
Marc Habbema
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