Overcoming the Quantitative Divide: Penn State's Approaches to Online Mathematics

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1 Overcoming the Quantitative Divide: Penn State's Approaches to Online Mathematics Andrea Gregg Senior Instructional Designer James Mundie Manager Educational Technology Juan Xia Instructional Designer Background and Context In 2006, Penn State World Campus began its final transition from paper-based correspondence courses to fully online interactive courses. In both face-to-face courses and correspondence courses, math students have typically submitted their homework in a paper-based format. This allowed an easy display of student work. It also enabled instructors to provide feedback directly on the paper that evaluates process and conceptual understanding instead of just final answers. The transition to online courses where students submit homework through electronic drop boxes, has posed special challenges for online mathematics courses. One challenge in particular is that input methods can vary from platform to platform and across different software packages. Additionally, character sets are focused on a relatively small subset of alphanumeric characters, and are often limited with respect to symbolic characters. This poses a problem for the submission of assignments where students are expected to show not only the answer to the problem, but also the steps taken to arrive at the answer. In order to work within the confines of sound pedagogy, students and instructors are usually forced to either find complicated workarounds within the software, or resort to more primitive means of submission such as pencil and paper and surface mail. Aside from being inefficient in terms of time and resources, these solutions are often inadequate in the face of ever increasing expenses and student and faculty expectations about the use of technology in online courses. In addition to homework submission, there are other challenges in online mathematics instruction. In face-to-face mathematics class there are typically live demonstrations of problem-solving; faculty hold office hours in which they work directly with students; and some institutions provide tutoring services through a learning or tutoring center. To create similar experiences in an online format requires tools that allow students to show their work, faculty to give direct and specific feedback, and options for synchronous communication. These experiences can be achieved through the use of several readily available off-the-shelf hardware devices, specialized software, and a willingness on the part of students and instructors to try novel approaches in teaching and learning online. Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 1

2 Online Services and Mathematics Courses While Penn State World Campus has not yet conquered the quantitative divide, we currently offer the following services and online mathematics courses using a variety of approaches to leverage the existing technology to make the learner experience most effective. Course/Service Technologies Application Approximate Cost Online Math Tutoring Wacom Bamboo Tablet Elluminate Live Synchronous problemsolving demonstrations ~$60/student ~$60/instructor/tutor Math 21: College Algebra I ~$70/student Math 4: Intermediate Algebra Math 17: Finite Mathematics Math 110: Techniques of Calculus I Document Scanning/Uploading, FLY Fusion Pentop Computer FLY Fusion Pentop Computer Wacom Bamboo Tablet Elluminate Live and feedback on homework ; feedback on homework; synchronous problemsolving demonstrations ~$55/student ~$55/student ~$60/student ~$60/instructor In order to provide a better service to students and faculty, World Campus has been experimenting with a variety of technologies, ranging from relatively simple, as in faxing homework to the instructor, to highly complex synchronous communications technology using Elluminate Live and Wacom Bamboo tablets. Solutions vary in effectiveness with respect to cost, application to specific pedagogical tasks, and complexity. Naturally, there are benefits and drawbacks with each technology solution. Faxing Homework Evaluation of Various Technology Solutions Use of the fax machine is the simplest method of interaction between a student and instructor in a distance education mathematics course. If a student is able to send and receive faxes, she can simply solve problems with pencil and paper, and fax it to the instructor who can then mark the paper and return it to the student. This method works well in an environment in which the student is accustomed to working asynchronously. Fax technology is very robust, dependable, and simple to use. There is generally not a cost associated with faxing documents, making this technology very cheap to deploy and use. In terms of disadvantages, however, the fax is not something that students are necessarily familiar with or have in their home, and students often have greater technological expectations when taking an online mathematics course. There is also often a substantial lag between when work is submitted and when it is graded and returned to the student. Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 2

3 Scanning Homework Related to faxing, scanning documents achieves many of the same outcomes from the student perspective, but requires the purchase of scanning hardware. Once scanned, a document can be uploaded to a learning management system drop box or simply ed to the instructor. The instructor can then mark the document using a program like Adobe Acrobat Pro or another PDF annotator and return it to the student through the same drop box or . FLY Fusion Pentop Computer The FLY Fusion Pentop Computer is a computer that takes the form of a standard ink pen. It works in conjunction with digitized paper, and everything that is written in the accompanying notebook is stored and processed on the pen for later retrieval using the software. A student can take notes, solve problems, and draw diagrams and graphs, which are captured by the onboard computer in the pen. When the student connects the pen to her Windows based computer, she can import the work stored in the pen into the software where it can be viewed or exported in a variety of formats. It is a simple matter to export the work as a jpg image and send it to the instructor via or upload it into a drop box in any learning management system. The instructor can then import the image into markup software, such as Adobe Photoshop, grade the work, and return it to the student. Additionally, there are built-in applications in the pen, including a calculator that the student draws on a page in the notebook, an mp3 player, and several math-based games. The FLY Fusion Pentop Computer works best for asynchronous communications, due to the inherent time lag associated with uploading, marking and returning files. Although the pen itself is capable of remembering which page the student has worked on, useful for picking up where the student leaves off after a break, there is no way currently to allow other users access to the device's output other than via exported images, so there is not an opportunity to easily revisit work once it has been exported. The writing done by the pen is very easy to read as it is a close shot picture of what was written on the notebook page. In terms of challenges with this solution, the Fly Pen is currently marketed to a younger audience and is also at this point, PC only. We have had mixed feedback from students on their use of the tool. Wacom Bamboo Tablet + Elluminate Live Elluminate Live, a web conferencing system similar to Adobe Connect, with its built in application sharing and whiteboard, affords an excellent opportunity for synchronous interactions in mathematics courses. Drawing on the whiteboard with a mouse is a very poor user experience. Therefore the solution we came up with is to use hardware drawing devices to enable students and instructors to better interact with the software. The Wacom Bamboo tablet is a relatively inexpensive, full-featured drawing device that takes the form of a pen and pad. The pen controls the user's mouse pointer, enabling interaction with a wide variety of software applications transparently. Using Elluminate Live's whiteboard application for example, users are able to write formulae, solve equations while showing work, draw graphs and diagrams, all while interacting with the instructor who can use a similar device to give live feedback, show examples, and make notations. Additionally, with Elluminate Live's application sharing software, users can use programs like Mathematica to create graphs and demonstrate the effects of equations on coordinate grids. In addition to math courses, the World Campus has begun working with the on-campus tutoring center to use Elluminate Live with the Wacom Bamboo Tablet to provide synchronous tutoring services to students at a distance. Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 3

4 + Elluminate Live Taking it one step further, we have also purchased tablet PCs for instructors to interact with Elluminate Live. The main difference between a and the Wacom Bamboo Tablet is that the user draws directly on the screen using the stylus. This allows better control over the output, which makes the ideal for producing high-quality captivate screen capture movies for use as downloadable examples. Faculty have used this combination to conduct office hours. Faculty Case Study Summaries In the next section, we will briefly discuss two faculty who have worked with various technology solutions in teaching online mathematics. Professor Janet May, Math 021: College Algebra In this course, students complete their homework using pencil and paper to show their work. They then scan the assignment and upload the resulting PDF file to a drop box in the LMS. Before adopting usage of the tablet PC to give feedback on student submissions, Professor May would open MS Word, type comments using a complicated language (i.e. (sqrt(9))^4=x) ), and then paste those comments into the annotation feature of Adobe Acrobat. This was very tedious and time consuming for the professor and could sometimes be difficult for students to understand. Now with use of the tablet PC, Professor May is able to provide more natural feedback in line with student's original submissions. She reports a time savings and less confusion on the part of the students in interpreting her responses. Professor Stan Smith, Math 110: Techniques of Calculus I Professor Smith expands on some of the technology solutions incorporated by Professor May and is committed to creating an online experience that very much simulates the face-to-face math course experience. Toward this end, he uses the Elluminate Live whiteboard and Wacom Bamboo Tablet to deliver lesson lectures weekly. While not required, students are able to participate in the lectures and ask questions which he will respond to in real time. Because the course is not synchronous, the Elluminate Live lectures are recorded and posted in the course LMS. The students use the Wacom Bamboo Tablet to submit their homework, interact with the instructor and tutors on Elluminate Live, and hold group discussions with team members. Professor Smith then uses the Wacom Bamboo Tablet to grade student submissions. This is the first semester using this approach and there has been positive, though limited, student feedback. Professor Smith reports positive pedagogical gains and plans to use the same approach in the next semester run of the course. Conclusion and Next Steps Because of the difficulties inherent in rendering mathematical symbols on systems geared towards presenting the written word, Penn State, like many educational institutions, continues to struggle with the challenges associated with providing effective online math education. The solutions we have discussed in this paper naturally have advantages and disadvantages ranging from computer compatibility (e.g. Mac, PC, or both), cost, instructor and student comfort, and ease of use. We have certainly not discovered the solution and would argue that the success of the technology solutions depends on a variety of factors including institutional culture, expectations of student expenses, and faculty comfort with technology. We will continue to experiment with different hardware and software combinations toward the end of providing our students pedagogically sound, cost efficient online math education. Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 4

5 Author Summaries Andrea Gregg is a Senior Instructional Designer with Penn State World Campus. She currently leads a team of Instructional Designers and Instructional Production Specialists to design, develop, maintain and support nearly 100 online undergraduate courses. Ms. Gregg has also taught academic courses in the Communication Arts and Sciences department, both in person and online. She got her Masters degree from Penn State University and her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University. Address: 225F Outreach Building axg251@psu.edu Phone: James Mundie has been an Educational Technologist with the Penn State World Campus for over 9 years, where his role is to support the research and development of various aspects of the distance learning environment. His professional interests include Emerging Technologies, Online Collaborative Learning, Personalized Learning Environments, Flexible Design, and Web 2.0 technologies. Address: 225 Outreach Building jpm165@psu.edu Phone: Juan Xia has been an instructional designer with the Penn State World Campus for 4 years. She works on the General Undergraduate Portfolio program to design and maintain distance education courses in a variety of subjects, including Mathematics, Astrology, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, and Spanish, etc. She received her M.Ed. degree in Instructional Systems from Penn State University. She is interested in applying technologies to ease the anxiety of online teaching and learning, and also to help achieve more effective and efficient learning outcome. Address: 225 Outreach Building jux100@psu.edu Phone: Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 5