Help for Choke Points in Pre-Calculus (Grades 10 - 14) May 6, 2004

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Help for Choke Points in Pre-Calculus (Grades 10
- 14) May 6, 2004
Wisconsin Mathematics Council

• Marty Schuh, mschuh_at_uwc.edu
• Hal Schlais, hschlais_at_uwsa.edu

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Support

• These activities are supported by
• A National Science Foundation Proof of Concept
  Grant DUE-0231508
• A Grant from the University of Wisconsin System
  Learning Technology Development Council

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Goals

• This project intended to produce
• pre-calculus modules to target conceptual hurdles
  
• a prototypical process faculty can use for
  finding or creating instructional materials using
  SCOs
• a prototypical collection of SCOs identified from
  existing precalculus content on the web
• case studies of each of the instructional
  participants

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Participants
PI Hal Schlais, Director of Learning
Technology Development - UW System Co-PIs
Robert Hoar, UW-La Crosse Tom Peneski,
UW-Colleges (Sheboygan) Team Jeff Baggett,
UW-La Crosse Karl Kattchee, UW-La Crosse
Patricia Nelson, UW-La Crosse Terry Nyman,
UW-Colleges (Fox Valley) Marty Schuh,
UW-Colleges (Manitowoc) Paul A. Sundheim,
UW-Colleges (Waukesha)
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Fast Timeline

• Funding and team selection began in June of 2003
• Team attended SCO-Days
• Materials found and assembled in July and August
• New (fall) team members briefed
• Materials tested in fall classrooms
• Additional materials developed in fall
• Materials and process are assessed

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Module Building Process

• Faculty identify choke points in pre-calculus
• Search digital libraries and other sources for
  assets related to the choke point
• Eisenhower National Clearinghouse
• MERLOT
• Others
• Augment found assets with additional content to
  create a common look for modules called Shareable
  Content Objects (SCOs)
• SCOs to be placed in a repository
• Used for instruction in a number of ways

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Choke Points

• UW Colleges
• Log Properties
• Algebraic manipulation of logs and exponential
  equations
• Horizontal stretching and periodicity
• UW-La Crosse
• Right triangle vs unit circle trig
• Radians vs Degrees
• Trig identities
• Open
• Inverse Concept

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Finding Assets

• Goal was to utilize existing learning objects to
  build Sharable Content Objects to address
  pre-calculus choke points
• Observations
• lots of material available on the web
• rarely exactly what you want
• often not public domain, difficult to modify, or
  incompatible
• best search tool was Google

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The Modules

• The instructional design (TCP)
• Textual background mathematics necessary to
  understand the central concept
• Conceptual gizmo investigations to learn
  about a particular concept
• Practical self assessment or practice section

T C P
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Repository
www.compute.uwlax.edu/precalc
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An example
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Example Module
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Example Module
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LMS

• The SCOs found and/or created by the team were
  placed into the Desire2Learn Learning Management
  System.
• Tracking and assessment features of D2L were
  utilized in assessing student usage.

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Observations

• One of the goals was to define a process by which
  the average math instructor could assemble and
  use a module
• Building a module around existing gizmos can be
  done with only a little knowledge of an HTML
  editor
• Building gizmos is technically demanding
• An open-source gizmo repository would help

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Collaboration

• There are benefits to collaboration
• Working with others within the system
• Access to experts
• There are challenges too
• Our team was spread out
• Face-to-face meetings
• Weekly conference calls
• Email
• Desire2Learn

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New Look

• More Readable
• Easier Navigation
• Less Content per Page
• Input from Instructional Designer

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Future Plans

• Development of How-to module
• Expansion beyond pre-calculus
• Expansion beyond mathematics
• Develop a system wide Repository
• Ensure appropriate Standards are maintained
• Open Source (Editable)
• Sharable (Platform/Server independent/LMS
  friendly)
• Properly tagged (Make them easy to find)
• (Nearly) Self Contained

www.compute.uwlax.edu/precalc