Abstract:
For many undergraduate students, mathematics is a rather abstract and difficult subject to learn. In order to master this subject well, it is essential that they have to develop good learning habits, including self-monitoring of their own learning, active participations in lectures and discussions, maintaining good communications with their lecturers and peer learning groups, sharing of engaged and reflective learning experiences with the classmates, etc. On the other hand, the lecturers also need to keep track of the progress of the students from time to time, especially their learning difficulties at the early stage of the learning of the courses concerned. In this connection, a user-friendly e-learning platform for effective mutual communications between lecturers and students should be developed and ready for use. To address such a need, our project team designed and implemented a portfolio-based e-learning platform to facilitate the lecturers and the students to monitor their own teaching or learning progress, as well as to integrate and deliver appropriate e-learning and on-line assessment materials for enhancement of teaching and learning of mathematics. In fact, the project team observed that portfolio-based learning had increasing implementation in a variety of educational and professional learning contexts in recent years. It was used to stimulate and monitor students’ professional development, and to stimulate their ability to become lifelong learners. Moreover, it was foreseen that there was a gradual move from the paper-based portfolio to the electronic counterpart in the education sector in the near future.
In this project, the project team worked closely with the lecturers concerned to identify some courses for pilot implementation of e-portfolio under the Mahara environment. The related teaching and learning materials to be incorporated in the e-portfolio were carefully selected, designed and developed. The end products could enhance the quality of teaching and learning of mathematics or information technology courses for the institute. Besides, it served as exemplified examples on how to learn mathematics or information technology more effectively for pre-service or in-serve teachers, as well as a good reference for the future design of new courses or new programmes in the institute in the future.
Code:
T0118
Principal Project Supervisors:
Subjects:
Start Date:
01 Mar 2012
End Date:
31 Aug 2013
Status:
Completed
Result:
The project team developed teaching and learning materials (e.g. notes, videos, worksheets, quizzes) and the online Mahara platforms of the courses concerned. It demonstrated project outputs (e.g. GeoGebra applets) to the colleagues at a mini-conference. Also, the teaching and learning materials, assessment tools and GeoGebra applets developed by the project team was used and further developed in the related courses in 2013-14 and onwards. The developed teaching and learning materials were also uploaded to Mahara progressively to form part of the departmental teaching portfolio or the individual staff’s teaching portfolio concerned.
Impact:
The effectiveness of the project was satisfactory. Each team member developed e-portfolios via the Mahara environment to enhance active, engaged and reflective learning. Suitable teaching materials were also designed and selected for incorporation in the e-portfolios. On the whole, this project provided a valuable opportunity for team members to share their teaching pedagogy and materials, which could enable teachers to understand more about how to teach mathematics effectively from the teacher’s perspectives.
Financial Year:
2011-12
Type:
TDG