Abstract:

The Math4U portal (math4u.vsb.cz) is designed for practicing all secondary school mathematics. The portal has been developed since 2016 during the implementation of the Math Exercises for You (2016-2019, 2019-2022) projects supported by the Erasmus+ programme. The portal is available in five languages (English, Spanish, Czech, Slovak, and Polish) and consists of three main parts - STUDENT, TEACHER, and CLASS. In the STUDENT part, students can practice with tailor-made online tests, the TEACHER section is focused on the quick creation of written or interactive tests, and the CLASS section offers training games.

In this paper, we describe a new Interactive Math Class (IMC) app which forms a bridge between teacher and students. The primary motivation for developing this application was an anticipation of the teaching and learning process as a continuous interaction between a teacher and students. The teacher reacts accordingly to an immediate state of students’ knowledge and deficiencies and adjusts the way of teaching to students’ most essential knowledge needs. Working with the application has the following phases - the teacher’s creation of the test, the students' work with the test, the use of the test’s results to improve the learning and teaching process.

Teachers can create tailored HTML online tests in one of the five languages by selecting any multiple-choice questions from the database of 5,800 questions. Thus, teachers do not have to create their math problems, do not have to spend time drawing pictures and graphs or performing typesetting in an editor. Instead, they choose among already prepared questions as they like, place them in an imaginary shopping cart, and receive the output for IMC. Technically, this means that a test assignment with a unique code is generated automatically. The teacher gives the code to the students, who can access the test within the client web application IMC with the use of that code. Students can solve this online test with or without their names revealed, depending on the instructions from the teacher. Teachers then obtain various statistics of success rates related to individual questions, students, or classes. It remains a teacher’s responsibility to adapt the teaching process to their students and endeavour that all students achieve their set goals.

Teachers have their tests available in their accounts (registration is free). This allows them to modify and reuse any tests previously created. Teachers can also convert any test into another language.

With the new application, a teacher will be able to design tests tailored to separate student groups (weaker, average or gifted) and, within each group, assign different tests (personalised learning). Moreover, thanks to the multilingualism of the portal Math4U, the same tests can be prepared in different languages. That can be used for teaching in bilingual schools, for CLIL or for teaching exchange and international students.

Thanks to the IMC app, teachers can easily create tailored tests for students and receive immediate feedback from students. In this way, a student helps a teacher recognize which part of the curricula to focus teaching efforts on. On the contrary, by investing a teacher’s efforts in areas difficult for students, the teacher increases the effectiveness of the whole educational process. The app is completely free and can be used on computers, tablets, smartphones, and under any operating system.

Keywords:

Mathematics, multilingualism, online app, tool for teaching.