TEACHING MATHEMATICS THROUGH ONLINE COLLABORATIVE ENVIRONMENT IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION CONTEXT

Abstract

The higher education sector is continuously working towards the improvement of support mechanism by means of strengthening of education technology and various other strategies. This requirement differs from the nature of the subject. For technical subjects, it is much easier to take the assistance of technology, such as online tools, videos, animation, interactive applications and much more. Whereas, subjects like Mathematics and Language learning, has a totally different scenario. However, the higher educational institutions are adopting a various innovative approach to enhance the student learning experience. This research paper focuses on some of those methods, which are adopted to improve Mathematics education at the foundation level in one of the higher educational institution in the Sultanate of Oman. The foundation level education was introduced to bridge a gap of basic requirements, which some of the students lack while completing their higher school and takes admission in the diploma or bachelor studies. Foundation Mathematics is one of the subjects which is being taught at this level. Although, there is a provision that student can opt for clearing a challenge exam and get admitted to the first semester, still many of the students opt for studying foundation due to various factors. In their school education, they are not allowed to use smartphones or devices during their classes. Whereas, in college, they can use their devices for educational purposes. The module leader prepares a session plan according to the learning outcomes and maps various activities with the support of various tools. Some of these tools are online, which are accessible on mobile phones. One such useful tool is Kaizala, which allows students to collaborate with each other to participate in various activities being conducted by the faculty members. It supports almost all the multimedia content such as audio, video, animation, interactive quizzes, polling, sharing of images, etc. In this research paper, the authors have described the implementation of such collaborative tools in various ways, to enhance student understanding. Finally, the method was found to be very useful and it has improved the results. Part-time students also found it quite useful, as they were able to participate in the class activities even if they are unable to make-up to some of their classes due to some official reasons. There were students who were repeating the subject for more than one time and who have also found such methods as quite useful ones. Overall, the experience of introducing online collaborative tools to improve the learning mechanism of Mathematics related subject was found to be very good.