online math courses

Gallagher was quite repetitive in chapter 4; I thought he could have made his point in a few pages. So, I'm going to introduce you to my inquiry paper topic.

Take the following equation, the Quadratic Formula, which is used in Algebra II (probably Math 2 in GPS, but I can't promise that). You probably remember it with a song: "negative b, plus or minus, square root of b squared minus four a c, all over two a" to the tune of some famous song that I can't remember the name of right now.

What does it take to put that equation on this blog page? It's an image, a .gif to be exact. So, when a math teacher creates a test, he or she typically uses an equation editor to format the symbols. Then, the equation editor creates the image, and the teacher drops the image onto the document. Once the image is created for a particular equation, it cannot be edited on the webpage if you don't like it. You have to go back to your image creating software and make it work there. Have you ever worked with images in a word processing document? Probably so. Can you imagine the labor required to create an image of an equation for every single question on your quizzes, tests, and other documents? That's not even talking about graphs....we'll stick to this one image for today.

Now, what if you are teaching an online math course? You have to create images for each equation that you want on your BlackBoard page, but you're used to the process because you do it all the time. What about the students? When they do their work, will you require them to learn how to create the images for the equations? Not all of them will be math teachers, but they'll hate math forever after they learn how to create equation images just for your one course!

As I see it, there are several options for teaching students to communicate in online math courses. First, we can teach them and require them to create images of their equations. That would look like the equation above. Second, we can have them scan their handwritten work, which will allow them to show their steps without learning how to type it all out. Third, we can require only answers to the problems without showing any work (let's be honest, we know that's not a good option, but it sure is the easiest!). Fourth, we can teach them to use the characters available to convey what they mean. If I wrote an email to a math buddy of mine, I'd show the Quadratic Formula above by typing

x = [-b + - sqrt(b^2 - 4ac)]/2a

Would you rather teach students to create images of equations, or would you prefer to teach them to type their equations using the available characters?

I've taught an online course, and my lessons were handed to me my first year. My 8th graders from all over the country couldn't have typed anything close to the Quadratic Formula, but they weren't expected to because they were in pre-algebra. I struggled to read their work, and I debated all summer with myself about whether I should teach them how to type what they mean. That course is the inspiration/frustration for my inquiry paper.

Somewhere along the way, we have to teach students how to type what they mean. That's where literacy comes in for me. Symbols are a huge part of math literacy, and creating the symbols they want is a problem for online math students. If we are going to have them create images, then we have to teach them how to do it (they don't teach math for a living after all). If we're going to have them scan their documents, then we have to make sure they know that going into the course so they can have all of the technology available to do it. If we're going to teach them to type using the available characters, then someone has to teach them that somewhere along the way. If you are their first online math teacher, then you get to teach them how to do it.

I located some research that confirms my suspicions that there are no good options for math teachers using online media. People are creating equation editors for online media, and I've used a couple of them. The code looks like HTML with bracket tags that all have specific meanings. (I tried to show you a tag here, but I don't know the code to make it show the brackets like the ones above the comma and the period. The webpage is reading my brackets as code!) If you want to see HTML code, click "View" on the menu bar at the top of your screen. Then, select "View Source." That code is what was created behind the scenes by blogger to show this page. The new equation editors for online media will help teachers a lot, but what about the students? Will it be standard practice to teach that coding knowledge at the beginning of a math course, or will the teacher make a "How to Type Your Math Equations" document that illustrates various codes and tags?

Now, enrolling in a good online math course will get you an introduction to computer coding as well. Eventually, we'll stop teaching students how to use the editors because they'll learn the coding at such an early age that we will be able to assume they know it already when they get to our courses. In the meantime, though, we'll need to think about how we equip students to convey their ideas. It sounds like literacy in math class will be informed by literacy as it relates to learning computer code.

I guess another option is to never teach an online math course...!

(My apologies to the English and social studies folks out there who use standard text to convey ideas in your disciplines; these issues might never cross your path except for my inspiration/frustration about them.)