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OLICO Maths Education

Making maths make sense.

maths

OLICO’s FREE online maths for Grades 7, 8 and 9

November 28, 2016 By Andrew

maths practice for grade 7 8 9 south africa

OLICO is thrilled to announce the launch of our GRADE 7, 8 AND 9 ONLINE MATHS PROGRAM which is now officially open to the public.

REGISTER FOR FREE: LEARN.OLICO.ORG

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OLICO’s online maths tool has been in development for nearly 5 years and contains over 20 000 unique interactive maths questions and 330 tutorial videos. This maths content is aligned to the South African CAPS-curriculum and rooted in the South African context.

Developed by Dr Lynn Bowie and a team of experienced education specialists, OLICO’s online maths tool is a useful supplement to learners, teachers, tutors or parents tackling grade 7, 8 and 9 mathematics. Says Lynn, “In grades 7 to 9 learners need to make the crucial transition from working with number and shape to laying the foundations of algebra and geometry. For many learners, the time and support available in school hours will simply not be sufficient to do this so OLICO’s online offering is one way in which we can supplement the work of the teacher.”

OLICO is calling on schools, teachers, after-school centres and NGOs who are interested in collaborating on this project to make contact. A core desire of OLICO is to develop and support a resource that is useful for teaching both in the classroom and in an after-school environment.

Filed Under: News, OLICO Maths, Resources Tagged With: "south africa", diepsloot, elearning, grade 7, grade 8, grade 9, mathematics, maths, non profit

Seven Tensions we’re experiencing using technology

October 11, 2015 By Andrew

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There is an instant appeal to the notion of using technology to improve academic outcomes in our schools, particularly in key gateway subjects like mathematics. The pronouncements of new tech-based initiatives often generate a significant amount of hype and excitement which is also often accompanied by bold proclamations of what technology is able to achieve. For the past 4 years, we’ve been using tech-based solutions to improve senior phase mathematics at OLICO Youth in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg. While we’re seeing strong improvements in academic performance, it is clear to us that technology is no silver bullet. In fact, in our experience, there are a number of important tensions we wrestle with on an almost daily basis. Some of these tensions are discussed below and shared in the hope that these experiences might be helpful to others too. We’d love to hear your experiences.

The Advantages of Technology

There are, without doubt, many positive aspects of technology in education and many reasons to be excited about what technology can help achieve. Perhaps most notably, and obviously, learners LOVE using tech-based solutions and adapt very quickly to whatever is put in front of them. Using technology, 45 Grade 7 learners from Diepsloot have tackled a combined total of over 100,000 maths questions this year alone (Feb-Aug 2015). It certainly would have been a lot harder to achieve anything of a similar magnitude using paper-based alternatives. So from the perspective of a significant improvements in “time-on-task”, technology offers exciting opportunities.

In addition, the interactivity of technology enables learners to receive immediate and personalised feedback to questions they’re attempting. The ability to watch video explanations and pause and repeat as necessary creates a safe self-paced learning environment. It is also clear that the wealth of analytical data available to a skilled teacher/tutor can have extremely positive implications for future lesson plans and targeted interventions.

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Tensions we experience and things we’re beginning to learn.

The way in which we work at OLICO Youth has involved a cycle of planning, implementation, reflection, revision and improvement. Here we document some of the tensions we have had to face in the process and some of the lessons we’ve extracted in dealing with these tensions.

Initially, we relied heavily on Khan Academy content (www.khanacademy.org) and learners were guided in terms of which Khan Academy videos to watch and then practiced using the online exercises that followed. However, this quickly led to our first major tension.

Tension 1: Using already existing materials vs. developing our own

Khan Academy (henceforth: KA) is an impressive resource, but increasingly we found that we wanted videos and questions more suited to the South African context and curriculum. We also found it increasingly difficult to keep track of learners and prevent them from engaging on activities we didn’t want them to. For example, learners would often follow the automated prompts from KA which is aligned to the US common core curriculum and not always helpful to our context. For learners new to computers and the internet, sites like KA can also be quite overwhelming and difficult to self-direct. This is further complicated by the different uses of maths terminology which generally created as much confusion in our learners as we were trying to solve. Our broad conclusion is that KA is a decent resource for learners with well-developed meta-cognition skills. The over-riding priority for our learners however, is to first bridge the gaps in foundational content knowledge before learners can effectively make use of sites like KA and other existing online resources.[1]

Our solution then has been to use the open-source learning management system, Moodle, and build our own much more restricted course content and structure. All the content we’ve subsequently developed is published under a creative commons license and free to share. The core of the online programme is still videos and questions banks (although these are now custom-built for our learners), but the use of the Moodle has also enabled us to include online games, where appropriate, and responsive web-based tools for visual representation of topics like number lines and fractions. Our Moodle is hosted online at http://learn.olico.org[2] where interested parties can self-register on many of the courses. Enrollment keys are available from learn@olico.org.

Tension 2: Working on computers vs. working with pen and paper

Early on, we discovered that it is possible for a learner to achieve a high level of mastery on the computer in a particular topic, but then struggle with the same topic on a paper based test. There are a couple of possible reasons for this: Firstly it seems that it is possible to get into a rhythm on the computer that, if not checked, can create an illusion of conceptual understanding. Secondly, short answer or multiple choice responses tend to predominate in computer-based environments. This means the kind of responses that require a clear exposition of the steps or a logical argument are backgrounded. However, the “working out” is a very important part of what learners will be assessed on in mathematics, and the ability to reflect on it is crucial to the learning process.[3]

To counteract this, the importance of learners completing homework in their OLICO booklets and regular sets of mixed written exercises, termed ‘5-a-day’, is emphasised. In addition, the “pause and review” section of the lesson plans involves a paper-based checkpoint for learners to complete offline and only later feed into the computer for feedback.

The dual nature of the checkpoints (i.e. written with pen and paper offline, but then fed into the computer for immediate feedback) provides very useful information for the facilitator. Moodle is able to provide immediate statistics on class performance – including a breakdown by question. The facilitator is able to easily identify problem areas that need to be worked on with the class as a whole. In addition, the individual written work allows the facilitator to scrunitise in detail the work of any learners who are having difficulty and to use the working provided there to identify individual misconceptions or problems. Checkpoints are accorded a high value because a virtual badge is awarded to learners passing the checkpoint quiz.

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Tension 3 – Learner mastery vs. working to a set timetable

In an ideal world, learners would be afforded an opportunity to take as long as they need to gain full mastery of a topic before proceeding to the next section. However, given that most learners (in our experience) are already 2 to 4 grades behind where they should be, time is a highly valuable commodity and in limited supply. This is especially true for learners who are far behind. The nature of mathematics dictates that they need to master the content in order to build knowledge, but they also need to keep moving – and without this impetus, many learners have a tendency to just drift.

In 2014, we allowed learners to wholly dictate the pace, but this created a wide and disparate spread across topic areas and made it very difficult for facilitators to track, monitor and effectively intervene. In 2015, we’re experimenting with a more hybrid approach that still allows learners to work largely at their own pace, but requires learners to cover a set number of lessons before a scheduled checkpoint quiz. Those learners who are struggling and need extra time attend additional sessions over and above their minimum of 2 sessions a week. It is still early, but the initial sense is that facilitators have a much better idea of how the class is progressing with this approach.

An ongoing challenge, particularly in relation to the Senior Phase (grades 7 – 9) intervention, is the identification of the core content and skills to focus on. This is complicated by the large backlogs learners arrive with and the limited time available in an afterschool environment. Identifying precisely which foundational elements to emphasise is not simple, and is one of the key questions we continue to work on in the development and improvement of the programme.

Tension 4: The need for remediation vs. current curriculum support

With a large number of learners initially ill-equipped to engage with grade appropriate curriculum content, there is a real need for remedial assistance. Many of the learners arrive with poor number sense, lack of experience in dealing with shapes and an orientation to mathematics as a set of arbitrary rules. There is thus an urgent need to provide learners with an experience of some of the fundamental basics of mathematics in a way that is connected and has meaning. Yet at same time, there is pressure from learners and parents to ‘cover’ content currently being addressed at school – a quandary we haven’t yet adequately resolved. While we have pushed the need to get the foundations in place and focused much of the computer-based work on developing a solid conceptual understanding, we have – by necessity – reverted to exam-specific drilling at points when learners have upcoming tests or exams. This kind of drilling has the advantage of offering some immediate rewards (normally a small uptick in the results for the test), and this improves confidence and buy-in to the programme where the really hard work of getting a solid grasp of the mathematics is done.

Tension 5: Individualised learning vs. creating communities of learning

One of the inherent advantages of a targeted use of technology is that the learner engages in a highly individualised learning experience. The computer will provide feedback based exclusively on what the individual learner inputs and the learner can respond appropriately in each case. However, there are also strong advantages to creating opportunities for extensive learner interactions. The value of peer-to-peer collaborative support is often vastly underestimated.

To this extent, we now look to start each class with a 5-minute game or challenge for learners to collaborate on. In addition to the homework learners receive based on where they are in the Moodle, we also assign the ‘5-a-day’ set of mathematics questions for learners to complete at home. Learners then share their experiences of the ‘5-a-day’ questions before they begin their computer-based sessions. Using feedback on learners’ performances from the Moodle, we are also able to identify groups of learners who need help with a particular area of content. Targeted small group sessions can then be structured for these learners where they can work with their peers and a tutor.

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Tension 6: Knowledge retention vs. gaming the system

Knowledge retention is a complex issue and hot topic in all forms of learning, since retention most likely only comes with a clear conceptual understanding of a topic. It is possible to master a single skill (e.g. adding fractions) in isolation without understanding the process at all. The gamification of our computer-based mathematics system has the potential to create a perverse incentive to simply get through the lessons by any means necessary, e.g. by figuring out the ‘trick’ to the right answer (even if the learner doesn’t understand why), or worse, simply copying from a fellow learner.

To prevent this and assess for learner retention, we have included regular mixed exercise sets to circle back on content previously covered and ensure that learners regularly have to deal with mathematics in situations where it isn’t immediately obvious which steps need to be applied. The checkpoints are also crucial as they are strictly supervised to prevent cheating and cover a range of skills. They thus allow us to pick up where learners are “gaming” their way through the online exercises.

Tension 7: Personal agency vs assumed control

The biggest learning and in some sense a bit of a contradiction is that learners only really start to fly once they take responsibility for their learning and see a relationship between personal effort and outcome. It is vitally important that learners want to understand the mathematics, take responsibility for asking when they don’t understand, and persevere with a difficult concept until it makes sense.

However, at the same time, we discovered in our initial explorations with computer-based learning that we need to play a very strong guiding (controlling) role in the initial stages. When learners had options to choose where to go on Khan Academy, some learners would spend most of their time working on easy exercises where they could have the gratification of getting everything right, but learning very little. Alternatively, learners would bounce off into topics completely disconnected from where they need to be. It thus requires a fine balancing act between temporarily taking more control (and needing to in order to get learners to find productive ways of working) and letting go enough that they can start to develop their personal agency and take responsibility for their own learning. Ultimately this is the clearest indicator of whether a learner is going to overcome their circumstances and succeed at mathematics.

Background information

OLICO Youth caters to 95 learners in grades 7-11 who attend computer-based mathematics classes for an hour after school, twice a week. Learners also attend life skills, study skills and literacy programmes on Saturday mornings. Participation in the programme is voluntary and learners are accepted on a ‘first-come first-served’ basis. However, strict attendance requirements are adhered to and learners who do not attend regularly are asked to leave the programme. OLICO only accepts a new intake of learners at the beginning of Grade 7 each year. Results of initial diagnostic tests each year suggest that the majority of learners entering the programme are between 2 and 4 years below grade level in mathematics.

The design of the programme is straightforward. Learners arrive at the centre after school; show completed homework to gain entry to the computer lab; follow the lesson-prompts on the computer; and collect new homework at the end of the session. The actual computer-based lessons are divided into 5 Ps.

  1. Pre-Quiz
  2. Presentation (video)
  3. Post-Quiz
  4. Practice mixed set
  5. Pause and review

 

[1] On a related point, we have been unable to replicate the example Salmon Khan uses in his TED talk of a struggling learner making dramatic gains to catch up with the rest of the class. In our experiences to date, the progression is much more gradual and requires sustained intervention since the skills that are lacking are rooted in core number proficiency gaps.

[2] There is a far greater variety of pre-existing options available to FET Phase learners already suited to the South African context. We have enrolled our Grade 10 and Grade 11 learners on Siyavula’s Intelligent Practice system (www.everythingmaths.co.za) and supplemented this with our own videos, lesson plans and checkpoint assessments.

[3] In this our experience echoes that of a New Zealand-based online programme, mathsbuddy.co.nz, and we have incorporated some of their suggested strategies into our work to deal with this.

Filed Under: News, OLICO Maths, Reports Tagged With: "south africa", diepsloot, e-learning, edtech, education, elearning, khan academy, mathematics, maths, online, technology

OLICO Youth Academic Report (to Oct 2014)

January 1, 2015 By Andrew

OLICO Youth continues to explore the effectiveness of computer-based mathematics solutions with a group of South African township-school youth. This year, sixty-five learners from Diepsloot between grades 7-10 are participating on the programme. Between Feb and Sept 2014, OLICO learners attempted over 76,609 maths questions and achieved an average 35% increase in basic number sense as well as an average 47% increase on foundational curriculum content. The focus now shifts to improving the speed at which learners progress through these lessons and improving the retention of newly-acquired knowledge. OLICO is committed to finding a genuine solution that is effective, sustainable and replicable. 

Introduction OLICO Youth is a community-based academic support programme for township school youth with a focus on senior phase mathematics. The aim of OLICO Youth is to provide learners with a pathway into high school mathematics by bridging the gaps in foundational understanding, thereby serving as a conduit into algebra and geometry. There are currently sixty-five Diepsloot learners between grades 7-10 enrolled on the OLICO Youth programme. Learners attend 2 computer-based after-school sessions twice a week as they progress through the OLICO curriculum at their own pace. To remain on the programme, learners must attend at least 75% of their sessions and complete their homework assignments. Learners also attend on Saturday mornings for non-academic input.

At each mid-week session, learners follow OLICO’s 5-Step Process:

  1. Arrive on time for scheduled session
  2. Check in and show completed homework
  3. Log onto computer with unique username
  4. Follow OLICO’s 5 P’s
  5. Check out and receive new homework

Learners work at their own pace once they log onto the OLICO learning management system. The personalised learning environment allows learners who score 80% or more in the short pre-lesson quizzes to skip these sections. Learners who achieve less than 80% however follow OLICO’s 5 P’s which is made up of the following:

  1. Pre-Quiz
  2. Presentation (video)
  3. Practice exercises
  4. Post-Quiz
  5. Pause and review

The most pressing need for the majority of learners joining OLICO Youth is to substantially improve their general number sense skills and mathematical fluency. There are major challenges across South Africa in the shift from foundation phase mathematics (grades 1-3) to intermediate phase mathematics (grades 4-6) with most learners enrolling at OLICO Youth needing to catch up 2-4 years worth of content. Given this context, OLICO focuses on building foundational skills as a gateway to deeper curriculum level understanding. Key lessons to date:

  • Learners are highly enthusiastic about technology. There is little doubt that the computer-based approach leads to an increase in practice attempts, time-on-task, positive attitude towards maths and commitment to progressing through the lessons. The sheer volume of questions attempted by OLICO learners this year is impressive. In total,  over 76,609 maths questions have been attempted this year alone… and counting.

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  • OLICO learners achieved substantial improvements in their basic number sense abilities. Since February this year, 83% of the learners completed the number sense curriculum with learners improving by an average of 35%. The number sense curriculum includes timed exercises focusing on improving mental arithmetic with questions on: single/double-digit addition/subtraction; number bonds; finding differences; friendly numbers; multiplication and division tables.

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  • OLICO learners also demonstrated substantial improvements on the foundational curriculum. Mastery for foundation-level topics is set at 80% since the lessons are fundamental requirements for future mathematics understanding. Learners are permitted to progress to subsequent lessons only once they have achieved this level of mastery. As a result, the speed at which learners progress through these lessons is an important additional indicator of effective learning. Given the amount of content learners need to cover, there is a need to increase the speed at which learners are progressing but, this concern aside, the results are impressive:

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On average, learners improved on their pre-assessment results by a whopping 47%:

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  • Equally pleasing is the progress of the OLICO learners who were part of the original pilot phase in 2012. These learners joined while in Grade 8. They are now in Grade 10 and have consistently improved their curriculum-level results. The grade 10 learners have displayed impressive levels of commitment, dedication and a positive attitude towards mathematics which is beginning to show in their results over time:

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  • In addition to the clear benefits of an increase in the amount of question-attempts and time-on-task, technology also offers instant feedback to the learner which is particularly important for effective learning. Learners can thereby shape their personal learning experiences by responding appropriately to the cues provided by the computer.
  • Finally, the numerous advantages of technology do not replace the need for a skilled facilitator alongside a context-appropriate programme. At the very least, the facilitator must have a well-developed number sense in order to intervene when learners get stuck. Technology enables a good facilitator to interact and assess learner needs (with real-time feedback) on a highly individualised and targeted basis.

5 core focus areas going forward:

  1. Over the forthcoming 6-9 months, the OLICO team is focused on finding ways to increase the speed at which learners progress through the OLICO lessons and thereby increase curriculum coverage.
  2. The OLICO team is also placing a greater emphasis on regular checkpoint interventions to ensure and better assess knowledge retention.
  3. Since English literacy remains a barrier for many of the OLICO learners, a literacy strategy is to be incorporated as core to the programme from 2015.
  4. A new custom-designed database is being built to simplify the OLICO processes and reduce administrative complexity.
  5. OLICO will continue to develop and publish open-source mathematics materials on our resources page and build a programme around Siyavula’s Everything Maths for our Grade 10 and 11 learners in 2015.

Conclusion: A significant amount of progress has been achieved over the past year, both in terms of learner progression through the OLICO maths curriculum and in the development of context-appropriate open-source content. There are strong positive indications that OLICO Youth is addressing a number of the deep-rooted foundational challenges facing SA’s learners. The key remaining challenge over the next 6-9 months is for OLICO to achieve progress on the “5 core focus areas” (as identified above). Success in this regard will determine whether the OLICO solution is indeed ready and effective enough to begin replicating in new environments.


Some programme background and history: Initially, the OLICO Youth project began by experimenting with freely-available online mathematics videos and exercises from Khan Academy. However, there are a number of challenges to using the Khan Academy platform for OLICO’s specific purposes and a decision was made to build OLICO’s own customised learning management system (LMS). The OLICO LMS thus pools together a variety of relevant open-source materials and the OLICO team has been developing additional content when context-appropriate resources do not already exist (published as creative commons). For the older grades, it also serves as a gateway into the Siyavula’s Everything Maths. The broader mathematics context: Although it is a very small sample, the profiles of the OLICO Youth learners reflect many of the broader South African mathematics challenges:

  1. The nation-wide results of the Annual National Assessments (ANAs) provide clear indications that the majority of learners require significant remedial and foundational support in mathematics. The complexities of curriculum-level content increases greatly because learners are often still grappling with basic maths fundamentals. See also: SAHRC and UNICEF (2014) Poverty traps and social exclusion among children in South Africa. Pretoria: SAHRC.
  2. The shift from foundation phase mathematics (grades 1-3) to intermediate phase (grades 4-6) appears to be particularly problematic. The transition has a deep impact on mathematics understanding as it involves a shift from additive reasoning to proportional reasoning; from concrete representations of numbers and concepts to more abstract representations; and from mother tongue instruction to English. For more on the difficulties in the shift to proportional/multiplicative reasoning, see: Hiebert, J. And Behr, M. (eds) (1988) Number Concepts and Operations in the Middle Grades, Vol 2. Research Agenda for Mathematics Education. NCTM; and Harel, G. And Confrey, J. (1994) The development of multiplicative reasoning in the learning of mathematics, SUNY press, Albany.

 

Filed Under: News, OLICO Maths, Reports Tagged With: computer, computers, diepsloot, education, khan academy, mathematics, maths, township

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