25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
Overcoming the Quantitative Divide:
Penn State's Approaches to Online Mathematics
Andrea Gregg
Senior Instructional Designer
World Campus Learning Design
The Pennsylvania State University
James Mundie
Manager Educational Technology
World Campus Learning Design
The Pennsylvania State University
Juan Xia
Instructional Designer
World Campus Learning Design
The Pennsylvania State University
Background and Context
In 2006, Penn State World Campus began its final transition from paper-based correspondence courses to
fully online interactive courses. In both face-to-face courses and correspondence courses, math students
have typically submitted their homework in a paper-based format. This allowed an easy display of student
work. It also enabled instructors to provide feedback directly on the paper that evaluates process and
conceptual understanding instead of just final answers. The transition to online courses where students
submit homework through electronic drop boxes, has posed special challenges for online mathematics
courses.
One challenge in particular is that input methods can vary from platform to platform and across different
software packages. Additionally, character sets are focused on a relatively small subset of alphanumeric
characters, and are often limited with respect to symbolic characters. This poses a problem for the
submission of assignments where students are expected to show not only the answer to the problem, but
also the steps taken to arrive at the answer. In order to work within the confines of sound pedagogy,
students and instructors are usually forced to either find complicated workarounds within the software, or
resort to more primitive means of submission such as pencil and paper and surface mail. Aside from being
inefficient in terms of time and resources, these solutions are often inadequate in the face of ever
increasing expenses and student and faculty expectations about the use of technology in online courses.
In addition to homework submission, there are other challenges in online mathematics instruction. In
face-to-face mathematics class there are typically live demonstrations of problem-solving; faculty hold
office hours in which they work directly with students; and some institutions provide tutoring services
through a learning or tutoring center. To create similar experiences in an online format requires tools that
allow students to show their work, faculty to give direct and specific feedback, and options for
synchronous communication. These experiences can be achieved through the use of several readily
available off-the-shelf hardware devices, specialized software, and a willingness on the part of students
and instructors to try novel approaches in teaching and learning online.
Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
Online Services and Mathematics Courses
While Penn State World Campus has not yet conquered the quantitative divide, we currently offer the
following services and online mathematics courses using a variety of approaches to leverage the existing
technology to make the learner experience most effective.
Course/Service
Online Math Tutoring
Math 21: College
Algebra I
Math 4: Intermediate
Algebra
Math 17: Finite
Mathematics
Math 110: Techniques
of Calculus I
Technologies
Wacom Bamboo Tablet
Elluminate Live
Document
Scanning/Uploading,
Instructor marks up
assignments using
Tablet PC
FLY Fusion Pentop
Computer
Instructor marks up
assignments using
Tablet PC
FLY Fusion Pentop
Computer
Instructor marks up
assignments using
Tablet PC
Wacom Bamboo Tablet
Elluminate Live
Application
Synchronous problemsolving demonstrations
Asynchronous
homework submissions
and feedback on
homework
Approximate Cost
~$60/student
~$60/instructor/tutor
~$70/student
~$2000/instructor
Asynchronous
homework submissions
~$55/student
~$2000/instructor
Asynchronous
homework submissions
~$55/student
~$2000/instructor
Asynchronous
homework submissions;
feedback on homework;
synchronous problemsolving demonstrations
~$60/student
~$60/instructor
In order to provide a better service to students and faculty, World Campus has been experimenting with a
variety of technologies, ranging from relatively simple, as in faxing homework to the instructor, to highly
complex synchronous communications technology using Elluminate Live and Wacom Bamboo tablets.
Solutions vary in effectiveness with respect to cost, application to specific pedagogical tasks, and
complexity. Naturally, there are benefits and drawbacks with each technology solution.
Evaluation of Various Technology Solutions
Faxing Homework
Use of the fax machine is the simplest method of interaction between a student and instructor in a distance
education mathematics course. If a student is able to send and receive faxes, she can simply solve
problems with pencil and paper, and fax it to the instructor who can then mark the paper and return it to
the student. This method works well in an environment in which the student is accustomed to working
asynchronously. Fax technology is very robust, dependable, and simple to use. There is generally not a
cost associated with faxing documents, making this technology very cheap to deploy and use. In terms of
disadvantages, however, the fax is not something that students are necessarily familiar with or have in
their home, and students often have greater technological expectations when taking an online mathematics
course. There is also often a substantial lag between when work is submitted and when it is graded and
returned to the student.
Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
Scanning Homework
Related to faxing, scanning documents achieves many of the same outcomes from the student perspective,
but requires the purchase of scanning hardware. Once scanned, a document can be uploaded to a learning
management system drop box or simply emailed to the instructor. The instructor can then mark the
document using a program like Adobe Acrobat Pro or another PDF annotator and return it to the student
through the same drop box or email.
FLY Fusion Pentop Computer
The FLY Fusion Pentop Computer is a computer that takes the form of a standard ink pen. It works in
conjunction with digitized paper, and everything that is written in the accompanying notebook is stored
and processed on the pen for later retrieval using the software. A student can take notes, solve problems,
and draw diagrams and graphs, which are captured by the onboard computer in the pen. When the student
connects the pen to her Windows based computer, she can import the work stored in the pen into the
software where it can be viewed or exported in a variety of formats. It is a simple matter to export the
work as a jpg image and send it to the instructor via email or upload it into a drop box in any learning
management system. The instructor can then import the image into markup software, such as Adobe
Photoshop, grade the work, and return it to the student. Additionally, there are built-in applications in the
pen, including a calculator that the student draws on a page in the notebook, an mp3 player, and several
math-based games.
The FLY Fusion Pentop Computer works best for asynchronous communications, due to the inherent time
lag associated with uploading, marking and returning files. Although the pen itself is capable of
remembering which page the student has worked on, useful for picking up where the student leaves off
after a break, there is no way currently to allow other users access to the device's output other than via
exported images, so there is not an opportunity to easily revisit work once it has been exported. The
writing done by the pen is very easy to read as it is a close shot picture of what was written on the
notebook page. In terms of challenges with this solution, the Fly Pen is currently marketed to a younger
audience and is also at this point, PC only. We have had mixed feedback from students on their use of the
tool.
Wacom Bamboo Tablet + Elluminate Live
Elluminate Live, a web conferencing system similar to Adobe Connect, with its built in application
sharing and whiteboard, affords an excellent opportunity for synchronous interactions in mathematics
courses. Drawing on the whiteboard with a mouse is a very poor user experience. Therefore the solution
we came up with is to use hardware drawing devices to enable students and instructors to better interact
with the software.
The Wacom Bamboo tablet is a relatively inexpensive, full-featured drawing device that takes the form of
a pen and pad. The pen controls the user's mouse pointer, enabling interaction with a wide variety of
software applications transparently. Using Elluminate Live's whiteboard application for example, users
are able to write formulae, solve equations while showing work, draw graphs and diagrams, all while
interacting with the instructor who can use a similar device to give live feedback, show examples, and
make notations. Additionally, with Elluminate Live's application sharing software, users can use
programs like Mathematica to create graphs and demonstrate the effects of equations on coordinate grids.
In addition to math courses, the World Campus has begun working with the on-campus tutoring center to
use Elluminate Live with the Wacom Bamboo Tablet to provide synchronous tutoring services to students
at a distance.
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25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
Tablet PC + Elluminate Live
Taking it one step further, we have also purchased tablet PCs for instructors to interact with Elluminate
Live. The main difference between a Tablet PC and the Wacom Bamboo Tablet is that the Tablet PC user
draws directly on the screen using the stylus. This allows better control over the output, which makes the
Tablet PC ideal for producing high-quality captivate screen capture movies for use as downloadable
examples. Faculty have used this combination to conduct office hours.
Faculty Case Study Summaries
In the next section, we will briefly discuss two faculty who have worked with various technology
solutions in teaching online mathematics.
Professor Janet May, Math 021: College Algebra
In this course, students complete their homework using pencil and paper to show their work. They then
scan the assignment and upload the resulting PDF file to a drop box in the LMS. Before adopting usage of
the tablet PC to give feedback on student submissions, Professor May would open MS Word, type
comments using a complicated language (i.e. (sqrt(9))^4=x) ), and then paste those comments into the
annotation feature of Adobe Acrobat. This was very tedious and time consuming for the professor and
could sometimes be difficult for students to understand. Now with use of the tablet PC, Professor May is
able to provide more natural feedback in line with student's original submissions. She reports a time
savings and less confusion on the part of the students in interpreting her responses.
Professor Stan Smith, Math 110: Techniques of Calculus I
Professor Smith expands on some of the technology solutions incorporated by Professor May and is
committed to creating an online experience that very much simulates the face-to-face math course
experience. Toward this end, he uses the Elluminate Live whiteboard and Wacom Bamboo Tablet to
deliver lesson lectures weekly. While not required, students are able to participate in the lectures and ask
questions which he will respond to in real time. Because the course is not synchronous, the Elluminate
Live lectures are recorded and posted in the course LMS. The students use the Wacom Bamboo Tablet to
submit their homework, interact with the instructor and tutors on Elluminate Live, and hold group
discussions with team members. Professor Smith then uses the Wacom Bamboo Tablet to grade student
submissions. This is the first semester using this approach and there has been positive, though limited,
student feedback. Professor Smith reports positive pedagogical gains and plans to use the same approach
in the next semester run of the course.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Because of the difficulties inherent in rendering mathematical symbols on systems geared towards
presenting the written word, Penn State, like many educational institutions, continues to struggle with the
challenges associated with providing effective online math education. The solutions we have discussed in
this paper naturally have advantages and disadvantages ranging from computer compatibility (e.g. Mac,
PC, or both), cost, instructor and student comfort, and ease of use. We have certainly not discovered the
solution and would argue that the success of the technology solutions depends on a variety of factors
including institutional culture, expectations of student expenses, and faculty comfort with technology. We
will continue to experiment with different hardware and software combinations toward the end of
providing our students pedagogically sound, cost efficient online math education.
Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
Author Summaries
Andrea Gregg is a Senior Instructional Designer with Penn State World Campus. She currently leads a
team of Instructional Designers and Instructional Production Specialists to design, develop, maintain and
support nearly 100 online undergraduate courses. Ms. Gregg has also taught academic courses in the
Communication Arts and Sciences department, both in person and online. She got her Masters degree
from Penn State University and her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University.
Address: 225F Outreach Building
University Park, PA 16802
E-mail: axg251@psu.edu
Phone: 814-867-1968
Fax:
814-863-2362
James Mundie has been an Educational Technologist with the Penn State World Campus for over 9
years, where his role is to support the research and development of various aspects of the distance
learning environment. His professional interests include Emerging Technologies, Online Collaborative
Learning, Personalized Learning Environments, Flexible Design, and Web 2.0 technologies.
Address: 225 Outreach Building
University Park, PA 16802
E-mail: jpm165@psu.edu
Phone: 814-865-0921
Fax:
814-863-2362
Juan Xia has been an instructional designer with the Penn State World Campus for 4 years. She works on
the General Undergraduate Portfolio program to design and maintain distance education courses in a
variety of subjects, including Mathematics, Astrology, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, and
Spanish, etc. She received her M.Ed. degree in Instructional Systems from Penn State University. She is
interested in applying technologies to ease the anxiety of online teaching and learning, and also to help
achieve more effective and efficient learning outcome.
Address: 225 Outreach Building
University Park, PA 16802
E-mail: jux100@psu.edu
Phone: 814-861-695
Fax:
814-863-2362
Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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