Using SOWISO to realize interactive mathematical documents for learning, practising, and assessing mathematics

Abstract

Successes of computer aided learning in mathematics education have led to high expectations of teachers and learners. A teacher would like to be able to review what students actually do when learning online, how much progress they make, which difficulties arise during learning, and to which subjects attention must be paid in the next lessons. Learners expect that they can consult their instructional materials anywhere, anytime and device-independent, and that they receive immediate and intelligent feedback on their work. At the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam we realize the envisioned interactivity and support in SOWISO. This is a cloud-based environment in which a course has the look-and-feel of an interactive module: texts, randomised examples and randomised exercises with automated feedback are integrated, and online formative and summative assessments are fully supported. We describe and evaluate a SOWISO-based course in basics mathematics for first-year psychobiology students, in which formative assessment and learning through worked examples are key elements of the instructional design.

A Collaboratively-Derived Research Agenda for E-assessment in Undergraduate Mathematics

“…However, LaTeX can be time-consuming to learn, and might be too cumbersome for students to use to submit their answers (particularly for assessments that have a short time limit). There have been many attempts to provide students with constrained interfaces to help them work line-by-line, from MathXpert (Beeson, 1998 ) through to SOWISO (Heck, 2017 ). Another option is to photograph handwriting and upload it, perhaps in addition to keying in a final answer; this sort of hybrid approach is considered in Question 40.…”

A collaboratively-derived research agenda for e-assessment in university mathematics

“…Question 43 considers the marking of students' line-by-line working, and there have been many attempts to provide students with constrained interfaces to help students work line by line. There are many examples from MathXpert (Beeson, 1998) through to SOWISO (Heck, 2017). At this stage, engineering of software is far ahead of serious evaluation of the individual decisions made by the software designers, or the effectiveness of such software.…”

Design and Implementation of an Inquiry-Based Mathematics Module for First-Year Students in Biomedical Sciences

“…The educational medium was SOWISO (Heck, 2017), a cloud-based environment for learning, practising and assessing mathematics that allows randomised examples and exercises with automated feedback (Figure 12.1). The designers of the module created tailormade GeoGebra-based tools (Figure 12.2) and simulations (Figure 12.3) with the Easy Java/JavaScript Simulations (EjsS) toolkit 2 (Garcia et al, 2017), which served as tools for promoting students' conceptual understanding of mathematics through inquiry Mayer et al (1995).…”

“…In terms of the three-layer model of inquiry outlined in Chapter 2 (cf., Jaworski, 2019), they did inquiry in mathematics and in teaching mathematics. The innovation included inquiry-based tasks, use of the digital environment SOWISO (Heck, 2017), and use of the programming language R (R Core Team, 2019) for exploring processes of change that can be described in the form of dynamical systems. Natasa Brouwer engaged in research on practice collecting and analysing classroom data (outsider research).…”