Someone told me today that they believed learning math was an individual activity. That connectives, networks, social learning theory, learner to learner interaction, don't have a role in learning math.
This made me think, does networking really only apply to certain subjects?
One suggestion I made, what first came to mind, was to have students create problems for other students to solve. That suggestion was shot down. Her response was "I tried it - didn't work, better students didn't like having to help out other students."
So night I am taking time to think and regroup. What do you think?
I have seen math learning online for young children, ABC Mouse commercials comes to mind. But this is still a learner to content activity. The course is an advanced computational calculations course, challenging but not to the level of advance calculus or detailed statistics.
What about posting incorrect problems? Could students look at the problem and try to identify the error? Maybe they could show how to fix it? But I wonder, once someone seems to have the answer, would everyone else just stop.
This makes me think about the math challenges I have seen on Facebook.
I find it interesting how many people will post what they believe the answer is, even after many others have already posted and you can see their answers in the comments. But people still post.
Does this suggest two components to learning math with a network?
1) Does the lack of a proposed solution, encourage other participate? Perhaps for a class you might share the answer after everyone participates. Then anyone who got it wrong has to show the proper way to solve the problem. A kinda of bonus for putting the time in up front?
2) Does the problem have to be challenging to the point that the problem causes enough doubt around the correct answer to causes learners to participate? But easy enough to encourage people to try, no one might try it in the first place?
I turned to the reading in the Networked book, part 1. I appreciated their presentation of the term networked individualism. I wondered if this concept might work for math? Rainie and Wellman discuss a definition. The term personal is used as the individual at the "autonomous center".
What if the math problem was designed and distributed such that different individuals in the network had different parts of the problem or solution. Then they would work together to complete the steps or components of the solution. Does this reinforce the reasoning and skills needed to calculate mathematical solutions?
What do you think? Thanks!
Interesting ... I don't think math has to be individual, but many of us learn it that way, treat it that way, etc. "Eyes on your own test!" We worry so much about people developing their own mathematics skills that we isolate them while learning the topic. However, among people who have a skill set, why shouldn't collaborative exploration be a way to practice and expand?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post. I look forward to interacting with you and the rest of the class over the course of the semester. I found your post very fascinating. It’s interesting to think about learning math as either an individual activity or a collaborative project. I thought your thought question of does networking really only apply to certain subjects was really interesting to think critically about. Specifically for math, I liked the idea behind posting an incorrect problem, and having students look at the problem and try to identify the error. That could be a good individual assignment and something to bring up to a class, and see what kind of response it receives.
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