Prof. Dr. Christine Bescherer, Prof. Dr. Christian Spannagel, PH Ludwigsburg, Institut für Mathematik und Informatik (Project Leadership)
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kortenkamp, PH Schwäbisch Gmünd, Abteilung Informatik
Prof. Dr. Ulrik Schroeder, RWTH Aachen, Lehr- und Forschungsgebiet Computerunterstütztes Lernen

Short Description

Maths plays in many study paths (beside Maths Bachelor and Master degree courses or Lectureship) an important

role, for example in Engineering and in Economic Sciences or Informatics. Recent didactic approches emphasize especially also the mathematical competences, for example "Problem Solving", "Reasoning" and "Communicating".

However the apprenticeship in the domain of Maths often focuses the communication of techniques

and less the development of mathematical apprehension and the advancement of general competences. The products of the learning processes are rather thematized than the learning process itself.

If you intend to encourage and to support the learning process, there will appear numerous problems:

Elementary students of different disciplines, except Maths with Bachelor and Master degree, are often not very much interested in Maths, especially in case of compulsory subjects in Maths. Furthermore the active and interesting training of Maths is often obstructed, because learners don't presume so far in Maths.
Maths courses in most cases take place at the beginning of the studies with a large number of students. An individual feedback within the learning processes, for example the analysis of mathematical learning journals, is even with high personal effort hardly to perform.
Individual feedback within processes (mathematical processes and general learning processes) presumes their documentation. This documentation is even expensive and is not possible to formalize in general. The independent observation and representation of the own learning process can usually not be demonstrated by the elementary students. In this case it is useful to find report techniques, to be employed, witch support the processes and constitute the basis of information for feedback from the tutor.
The analyses of the documentation of the learning processes as basis of feedback and evaluation are time-consuming. For regular feedback for a big amount of students computer-aided analyses are inevitable. However the analyses of processes are extremly dependent on their content and on the form of presentation. Computer-based methods have to be developed for this specific issue.

In the project SAiL-M

Design Patterns for an activating environment to learn Maths at Universities will be formulated, implemented and made usable for others,
tools for documentation and analysis of learning processes will be developed and provided for these learning environments,
the effectiveness of the learning environment and the value of the process related feedback will be evaluated.

You will find more information about the project SAiL-M on the Projectpage.

Contact

Wolfgang Müller, Mediendidaktik und Visualisierung

Matthias Ludwig, Mathematik