Maple & Moodle in Teaching Mathematics: the E-learning Project of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Turin

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1 Maple & Moodle in Teaching Mathematics: the E-learning Project of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Turin M. Baldoni, S. Coriasco, M. Marchisio, S. Rabellino In 2007 the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Turin started the Project E-learning e didattica interattiva a distanza. The Project was illustrated to the Compagnia di S. Paolo di Torino, that, after having examined it, granted financial support to help its implementation. This Project aimed at extending the e-learning services offered by the Faculty to the students, as well as at flanking the traditional teaching of Mathematics with an extensive use of the new technologies available nowadays. In particular, one of the main aspects has been the choice of acquiring the whole MapleSoft suite (Maple, MapleNet, MapleTA) to make it the core of a system of preparation and distribution of didactic materials, mainly within the opensource e-learning platform Moodle, widely adopted in Italian Universities. The choice was motivated, among the rest, by the following reasons:! the need to give students a good training in the use of symbolic and numerical computation systems, since such knowledge has become an important aspect of modern scientific education; indeed, experience with such systems is more and more appreciated and/or requested by societies hiring graduates in Mathematics and other scientific disciplines;! the wide diffusion of the Maple computer-algebra system, both for research and teaching activities in the Universities, as well as for engineering and simulation in industry;! the full integration of the Maple system with MapleNet (distribution of Maple Worksheets through the web) and MapleTA (test and authoring system, allowing the creation of tests including open answers containing mathematical expressions);! the possibility of including theory, exercises, assignments, numerical and symbolic computations, 2D and 3D graphics in the Maple worksheets;! the friendly user interfaces ( palettes and clickable math ), making easier for students to learn how to use Maple, for instance to check their solutions to exercises;! the availability of downloadable didactic material on the web. Within the Project, in the second semester of the Academic Year 2007/08 some professors of Mathematics decided to use Maple & Moodle in their courses for students in Mathematics and in other scientific disciplines like Computer Science, Physics, Geology. Maple has been used to prepare lectures (of analysis, statistics, geometry, ), tutorials used in the computer rooms and homeworks assigned to the students. The projection of Maple worksheets enriched the lectures, for instance through the use of a much better graphics in 2 and 3 dimensions and animations, which allow the teacher to explain more easily some delicate mathematical concepts. It was also possible to treat relevant masses of numerical and symbolic data: for istance, in statistics it has been possible to study much more meaningful examples. During tutorials classes, the students solved the exercises both by hand and by using computers, and had the opportunity to try to build simple mathematical models. Organised in this way, the tutorial classes saw a much more active involvement of the students. All the worksheets used during lectures and tutorial activities have been published on the Moodle page of the course through MapleNet, a facility which allows the publication and fruition, over the internet, of Maple applications. In particular, the fruition can be done with a web browser while the server-side takes care of the rendering and the management of the published documents. Notice that it is not required that the user has a

2 copy of Maple installed on his/her computer. On this base, we have developed two Moodle modules, respectively supporting the use of Maple worksheets and of maplets. The MapleNet server is installed on a SUNV40Z system, using Linux CentOS5 as operating system. The publication of a worksheet starts with the configuration of the Worksheet Maple Activity module, as reported in the following picture: Here the Adminstrator of the Moodle platform sets the parameters for the connection with the Maple- Net server. The teacher finds in the list of activities a new resource, named Maple Worksheet. This kind of resource allows loading a Maple Worksheet:

3 Once a Maple document has been uploaded, it can be viewed within Moodle. Examples are the following:

4 Students will see the document in this same way. Notice that the interactive behaviour is preserved and the student can fully benefit of the resource as if he were using Maple directly. The architecture of the integration of Maple within Moodle is given in the following picture:

5 The modules which have been developed in order to support the integration are open source and will be availble soon as official Moodle modules. Currently, we are working at the development of an interface between MapleTA and the Moodle environment, in order to make it available in a way similar to MapleNet. At the moment, Maple TA has been used in two ways. First of all, in order to prepare some tests with open answers, freely available to the students for their self-evaluation. This was greatly appreciated, since the students could repeat the assignments many times, receive the evaluations and check answers, with the correct one displayed and compared with the wrong one in case of mistakes. Then, Maple TA was used, in an experimental way, also for the examinations. The students had to solve the exercises of the assignement by hand as usual, and the evaluation was done by hand by the teachers as well, but, additionally, at the end of the test the students were asked to register their answers also on the web forms of MapleTA, in order to allow the comparison of the scores given by teachers and by MapleTA. These experiments will continue in the next months. Examples of assignments are given in the following pictures:

6 The Project activities with the Maple & Moodle system have been successful: indeed, the resources made available by the people who actively participate in the Project brought to a general satisfaction of both the students and the teachers. The questionnaires filled in at the end of the courses showed a higher level of involvement by the students, as well as the appreciation of the potential of the MapleSoft suite and various suggestions to further improve its usage. The innovative aspects of mathematical teaching successfully tested within the Project gave rise to high interests by other Italian Universities, as well as by many high schools.