You like the idea, BUT THEN WHAT?
Maple T.A. content authoring and
implementing at Waterloo
Tonya Noël
Online Learning Consultant
Centre for Extended Learning
Session Abstract
Between September 2007 and August 2014, more than
100,000 University of Waterloo students completed an
assignment inside of Maple T.A. This number continues
to grow exponentially as we work together with
Maplesoft to improve our fully online and blended
courses, develop high school outreach resources, move
some of our online math courses to an open space, and
create a content authoring tool specifically targeted to
those in a STEM-related discipline. This presentation will
summarize how we transform ideas into tangible
learning objects and discuss some of the
implementation challenges we’ve encountered and
overcome (or encountered and are still trying to
overcome) over the years.
Today’s Agenda
Who we are
What we do and
How we do it
Implementation
challenges
Key Stakeholders
Three groups of people work with Maple T.A at Waterloo: Faculty Champions, Faculty Support Staff, and University Support Staff Image retrieved online June 11, 2015 from hBp://www.formalofficesuites.com/img/home-­‐box2-­‐reIna.jpg Outreach materials use Maple T.A. quizzes in the form of self-­‐assessment ac;vi;es students can use to check their understanding courseware.cemc.uwaterloo.ca Some courses allow students to take Maple T.A. prac;ce quizzes before aBempIng their graded assignments. An increasing number of these quizzes are being posted publicly: open.math.uwaterloo.ca Some courses/programs include scores on Maple T.A. quizzes as part – or all – of students’ grades Maple T.A. is used to administer Waterloo’s Math Readiness Exam to thousands of high school students every spring We hope that the upcoming authoring tool will save us development ;me Usage – students per faculty
Faculty 2007 & 2008 2009 & 2010 2011 & 2012 2013 & 2014* Total Math 4029 17,450 27,060 12,013 60,552 Science 1436 13,578 12,613 10,778 38,405 Engineering 362 2805 2090 2559 7816 0 400 407 309 1116 5827 34,233 42,170 25,659 107,889 Arts TOTAL Thanks to Paul Kates for the data!
*Excludes data from fall 2014 term
Usage – courses per faculty
Faculty 2007 & 2008 2009 & 2010 2011 & 2012 2013 & 2014* Total Math 13 45 71 33 162 Science 2 32 32 26 92 Engineering 3 11 11 10 35 Arts 0 3 6 5 14 TOTAL 18 91 120 74 303 Thanks to Paul Kates for the data!
*Excludes data from fall 2014 term
Open Site Analytics
cemc.courseware (high school outreach) open.math (university undergrad) Sessions to date 62,333 915 Average dura;on 8:06 min 12:43 min Canada (80.7%), Trinidad & Tobago (5.4%), United States (5.2%) Canada (92.2%), China (3.6%), United States (1.9%) Top 3 countries Data presented as of June 1, 2015
Why the Drop?
We think there are two reasons numbers dropped:
1.  We stopped actively recruiting, and 2.  Faculty assignments changed
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???????? ??? ? What How How Support Staff are Trained
Ok BeBer DocumentaIon USE IT! Direct support from Maplesob How Support Staff work with Instructors
Support for Support Staff 2 1 Instructors Support Staff Both Faculty and University Support 3 ???????? Why Faculty Support is a Good Idea
Avoid redundancy Quality control OrganizaIon More Ime for faculty Both Faculty and University Support Early Day Challenges (Getting Buy-in)
1.  Steep learning curve
2.  Misdirected frustrations
3.  Performance rumours
4.  Quality concerns with public
exam bank
5.  Considerable changes
between upgrades
Image retrieved online June 11, 2015 from hBp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emoji_u1f44d.svg Resource Challenges
1.  Success leads to more work
2.  It takes time to learn/train
3.  It takes time to “do more”
4.  Younger employees might not ask
enough questions
Design Challenges
1.  Number of parameters
2.  Level of difficulty
3.  Sufficient amount of feedback
4.  Blind trust from subject matter
experts
Technical Challenges
1.  “Annoying little things
2.  No syntax highlighting
3.  Can’t comment the back-end code
4.  Can’t edit Maple worksheets
directly in T.A. 100101010001010101010 111001100110101101010 001111101010101011111 Questions?
Tonya Noël
tnoel@uwaterloo.ca
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/tonyanoel
Paul Kates
*Sean Scott
Mark (Stu) Stewart
Stephen Tosh
Rachael Verbruggen
*Tim Zhou
--
Carey Bissonnette
*Steve Furino
Firas Mansour