Presentation by Josje Lodder (Open Universiteit Nederland) on different feedback studies at the JEM Symposium on “math tutoring: tools and feedback” in Heerlen, Netherlands.
Not so many tools on linear algebra, e.g. the row operation calculator in the linear algebra toolkit.
Why are we using these tools: gap between high school and university, extra draining during courses, save time to teach concepts (practice can be done at home), preparation for re-examination, distance education.
What results do we expect: learning of algorithmic skills, efficient solution strategies, …
condition: bug free, user friendly, in accordance with course, offering help, providing feedback, different notations confuse the students (tools should adapt to the course material)
Call for improving math tutoring tools:
The presentation by Josje Lodder allowed a very nice summary on the scope of the symposium. She pointed to the reason why we want math tuoring tools and what results we expect when using them in teaching and pointed out conditions these tools should satisfy. Many of these condition still seems to be an issue. This symposium has gathered a very good collection of existing work aiming at providing appropriate feedback to the students while solving a problem, which seems an important condition of tutoring systems. This includes basic technologies and services, interfaces (partly making use of these services), and evaluations. Most of the participants of the symposium strongly collaborate; much effort is invested to integrate services and systems: Just two point out two example: The web services presented by Johan Jeuring is used by the MathDox system, which material is now available in Moodle; while the MathDox is editor is used in the ActiveMath system. It is very good to see these joint efforts towards making math tutoring more usable and efficient.