Appendix 5: Technology Enhanced Pedagogy

In recent years, I have developed an approach to creating on-line mathematics teaching modules that features a very high level of student engagement and visual learning. The development requires the management of a team of programmers, content authors and editors. My teams have consisted mostly of students and former teachers. The projects have been funded by government, industry and non-profit foundations. I will briefly describe each project with its time frame for development and follow that with a table showing funding sources and amounts.

Conic Sections (CS): This is being developed as a resource for students and teachers in Saskatchewan at the senior high school level. We cover the entire curriculum on conic sections (circles, parabolas, ellipses, hyperbolas) in an environment that includes dynamic interaction with the graphs of the curves under discussion. (May, 2000 - April, 2001)

Number Theory and Encryption (NTE): This is aimed at the top 10% of high school mathematics students as an enrichment activity. The topic is interesting (the students learn how Public Key Encrytion works and will design their own codes), accessible (requires very little background except a facility for thinking logically), and almost completely independent of the regular school curriculum. The topic is also an excellent one for a gentle introduction to deductive reasoning and proof. The module will require about 60 hours online for a student to complete. It is planned as the first in a whole array of similar enrichment modules. (2000-2002)

Math Foundations Course (MFC): This is a course aimed at adult learners who wish to prepare for a quantitative program of study in university or technical school, but who have lost all their skills in math. It is intended to serve as preparation for our MRC described below. Our major motivation is aboriginal learners in Northern Saskatchewan, but it is be available to any adult learner who needs their basic skills rebuilt. MFC has been in use for two years now in an on-campus transition program for aboriginal students and in LaRonge. (1998-2002)

Math Readiness Course (MRC): This is the first course we built as a distance delivery version of our popular Math Readiness Summer Camp. It has been in use in Northern and Rural Saskatchewan for four years now. We recently upgraded it to take advantage of the new tools we had developed. This revision was supported by a Technology Enhanced earning (TEL) grant. (1996-2002)

Exercises in Math Readiness (EMR): This is a rather large, but plain, set of static web pages containing many of the exercises in our Course Guide for Math Readiness, together with links to hints and solutions. It is freely available on the web at http://math.usask.ca/readin and is very popular with about 6000 page requests per day (which represents about 100 serious users per day we estimate). I have a part-time student adding to the site each summer. (1997- )

Peer Help Internet (PHI): This was a joint project with two computer scientists to develop a peer discussion area, for students in online math courses, that features an easy to use composition palette for mathematics expressions. (1996-97)