Assimilating the tools and their importance - Part II

As mentioned before, this entry will be a summary and my thoughts on the various tools and techniques I researched over the past few weeks. I also had the last staff meeting for this semester with my tutors. We discussed some of the techniques which I was thinking about implementing as we move towards a new, improved Math Lab! More on the responses and suggestions a bit later.

• I talked about having a web repository of basic techniques to solve problem amongst other things. One must have tool in this repository should be the Web based math solver. This looks easy to implement (some simple coding techniques and a lot of help from tutors). This will help the students get help 24/7 with their basic problems. Since the tutors know which problems are most common and also what are the best steps to solve them, we can draft the whole site according to their feedback! Is it feasible? Yes, but we do need input from tutors and students alike. Is it worth the effort? Maybe - the only downfall I see to this is that the students regarding as another website with no active feedback. Can we improve on this? Yes - maybe we can make this into a wiki style tool where anyone can edit (UF students in the classes) but it will be monitored regularly. Unless we make this a more responsive system, I don't see us implementing this in the future. We can also think about creating a math Wiki for each of the classes we tutor - edited by the students, tutors and the teachers! There is already a Math Wiki which we can use as a starting point to build our wiki on.
  
• The previous point makes it seem like the more interactive the website is the more interested students will be in it. Then can we use Java applets to help the students? Sure we can! This can be a great addition to the web repository. Even teachers can assist in designing the applets. Is it worth the effort? Yes, there aren't too many Java applets targeted for specific classes. Each class can have its own set of applets which give basic problem solving help based upon the material covered. The only problem might be the actual coding of the applets since it does take some time to create problem solving applets. But the amount of technical know how on campus is tremendous and we can probably hire some students to work on it!
  
• Since we provide TV tutoring after the Math Lab closes, we need to think about how to improve it (especially after I analyzed it's effect taking into consideration the "Media Equation). We can probably can store them as webcasts and tag them so that students who miss a particular show can view it afterwards or just review it if they feel like it.
• The last post talked about the ActiveMath - a a stable, web-based, multi-lingual, user-adaptive learning system for mathematics. This seems like a perfect example of how we can improve our individual tutoring - we can schedule one student with one tutor for the whole semester. The tutor will guide the student via creating content for him/her using appropriate exercises. Is this feasible? Maybe - depends upon how much the tutor is willing to invest into. We can probably have full time tutors who can dedicate all their efforts to more than one student at different times of the day. Is this worth the effort? I think the amount of rich content and personal space the student will get should bring great results!

As I finish up this blog, I want to mention some of the feedback I actually received at the staff meeting I talked about yesterday. I mentioned to the tutors about using an IM client, a Math Wiki, few Java Applets, ActiveMath among others. The tutors seemed to like the concept of Math Wikis and applets a whole lot better than the rest. Their complaints about IM client was that unless we include in ActiveMath, it might end up being a waste of resources and time as it takes more time to type than to talk. Some suggested adding voice chat to IM clients, which seemed like a great idea. Some tutors liked the concept of ActiveMath but said that since they have regular classes and school commitment, it would be more appropriate if the Math department hired full time faculty or TAs to do it.
Overall, I think I have learned a great deal from the comments posted by my group members - Megan Di Giovanni, Vickie Durrance, Laurie Kitchie as also other students in the class and TA

Joseph Greaser. Their comments helped me get more understanding on the posts. Hopefully everyone enjoyed reading my posts (I know I enjoyed reading everyone's posts :) ) and found some useful tools which they can use in their teaching career or day to day life! Thank you everyone!