Aim

To explore the design and development of open source Learning Math Apps and website, for use in Android and iOS mobile devices.

Final Report Hack Design Thinking Methodology

Our approach is start with prototype first then to cycle through to understand, define, ideate, prototype and test Math apps tailored to the Singapore Primary syllabus, improved and infused with literature and school-based-research pedagogical features and make them freely accessible on the internet, for the benefit of all in Singapore and beyond. We speculate that the hack design thinking will allow the project to rapidly developed 15 (instead of the initial 4 planned) solutions that actually meet MOEHQ officers’, teachers’ and students’ needs in the one year SSTRF time frame because of the existence of rich Math expert knowledge (we already been empathizing, scoping and ideating all the time) and deep educational technological knowledge to create apps.

To sum it up, we have five stages to our research methodology:

Hack Start Stage 4 (Prototype):

Create working prototypes based on the wealth of resources on OPAL and the internet.

Stage 1 (Empathize):

Understand users’ requirements to develop a deep understanding of the teaching and learning challenge-problem by networking with ETD ICT in Math Learning Community teachers and scanning the internet and literature.

Stage 2 (Scope):

Define clearly the problems to solve. Expand the related scope of what the simulation can do to cover more learning issues across primary 1 to primary 6, foundational to gifted programme.

Stage 3 (Ideate):

Brainstorm potential designs that can be supported by the selected open source tools.

Stage 5 (Evaluate):

Assess their usability and engage in a continuous short cycle of prototyping process to continually improve the design.

Proposed Design Thinking Methodology

Our approach is to empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test Math apps tailored to the Singapore Primary syllabus, improved-infused with literature and school-based-research pedagogical features and free on the internet for anyone to use, for the benefit of all students in Singapore.

In brief, stage 1: empathize aims to develop a deep understanding of the teaching and learning challenge-problem by networking with ETD ICT in Math Learning Community[1] teachers and scanning the internet and literature. If the App is ready by stage 1 (empathize), it will include user (teacher and students) experience. Stage 2: define aims to clearly articulate the problem the project wants to solve as agreed by the team. Stage 3: ideate aims to brainstorm potential solutions using the open source tools selected by the PI and develop the solution using open licensed tools to lower barriers to scaling up these practices using our solutions-apps. Stage 4: aims to design a series of prototypes to test part(s) of the solution and integrate them eventually. Lastly, stage 5: test aims to engage in continuous short cycle of innovation process to continually improve the design.

Key Findings

1. 1. Technology Magnifies

Case 1: Anchor Green Primary School

The Telling Time lesson conducted by Ms Anna Goh (Anchor Green Pri) was very effective because the practices of pattern recognition on O’ clock and half past where the whole class would sit on the floor in front of the whiteboard and focus on the teacher’s facilitation and guiding questions.

Students were invited to ask questions orderly and the teacher used a storybook about time to set the context, and flip paper table to write down their collective responses. The App developed was on the class projector screen serving as a teaching tool.

In the last 15 minutes, students are allowed to practice through the self assessment game of telling time while the teachers goes around the classroom to check on their learning progress.   

Case 2: Henry Park Primary School

The Target Math Addition Game lesson conducted by Ms Theresa Heng (AST MTT) was effective because the practice of the game play was an established practice using physical cards, worksheets and teacher facilitation by Theresa.

Students were paired during the lesson, using a laptop to engage in the game play of taking turns to add using their ‘hands’ of cards (number 1,2,3,4,5) and who reach the target of 20 first, is the winner. In order to win consistently, player 1 and player 2 need to strategize target minus maximum of opponent players card minus minimum of own card.

For example, to win, 20 - 5 -1 = 14, so both players will try to reach 14 first, in order to gain control. Using the same logic, 14 - 5 -1 = 8 and 8 - 5 -1 =2 is deducible.

So to win, adding to 2 first and that player will have control by always adding to 2, then 8, then 14 and finally 20. To our delight, most students were able to come up with their own strategy to win for those challenges set in the worksheet.

The complexity and challenge can be further by selecting different targets instead of 20, even or odd set of cards numbers for players and starting number not equal to 1.

At the end of the lesson, one boy came up to the project team and issued a challenge to play the game using both players with only even cards 2,4,6 for both players.

Thus, 20 - 6 - 2 = 12 and 12 - 6 - 2 = 4, so the boy who is player 1, started by hitting the 4 card and managed to reach 12 and 20 eventually , winning the game consistently.

This is a moment where the magic of student creativity was clearly demonstrated through the student’s mastery of the rules of addition with a gaming element.

The two cases serve as evidence supporting the argument that educational technology can amplify student learning gains measurably, provided there are effective teaching and learning processes.

Figure from A model of teacher professional knowledge and skill including PCK: Results of the thinking from the PCK Summit January 2015 Julie Gess‐Newsome

In other words, educational technology cannot ‘cure’ bad teaching nor poor learning attitudes, but can magnify effective teaching and learning gains but it can also worsen matters in already ineffective lessons.

2 What MOE teachers like

2.1 Accessible

Teachers feedback that the interactive resources are accessible and runs smoothly in operating systems such as mobile Android, iOS and laptop WIndows OS and Mac OS. Having the same simulations as Apps greatly increase the ease of using them in the classroom without strong WiFi as the students can be instructed to download the Android or iOS app where there is strong WiFi.

2.2 Adaptable

Teachers feedback that the strengths of the prototypes is their ability to further customize to suit their pedagogical preferences, such as for use in guided inquiry, self directed learning or demonstration during direct instructions. Thus, most of our apps are designed with 2 modes, one to support teachers’ direct instructions and other existing pedagogical practices and two to support students’ self directed learning and productive exploration.

2.3 Affordable

Teachers feedback that the free prototypes for Google and iOS and the website do indeed make them very easy and convenient to deploy to the students’ own personal  mobile devices or the schools’ devices (laptops and tablets).

3. What MOE-HQ like

Quality Learning in the Hands of Every Learner

Aligned with the ICT Masterplan 4 goal of “Quality Learning in the Hands of Every Learner - Empowered with Technology”, these interactive resources can be regenerated and deployed as web pages (HTML) for Student Learning Space, mobile Apps (APK and IPA) and even electronic books (EPUB), using the same technology tool called Open Source Physics OSP (Easy Java-JavaScript Simulation, EJSS) modeling tool.

Dissemination

The Apps are available on the Open Source Physics at Singapore digital library website, Android App and iOS App Stores. The table below shows the number of visits and installations as a proxy to our dissemination efforts.

as of 20180201

NA - not available

Thus, grand total of website visits, Android installs and iOS installs is 22,000 and 37,000

as of 20170401

NA - not available

Thus, grand total of website visits, Android installs and iOS installs is

59576

A total of 4 face to face Sharing sessions-workshops were conducted and the URL of the contents of the sharing on each URL below.

1 https://sg.iwant2study.org/ospsg/index.php/events/682-20180308 for 40 teachers

2 https://sg.iwant2study.org/ospsg/index.php/events/527-20170503 for 20 teachers

3 https://sg.iwant2study.org/ospsg/index.php/events/463-20170322 for 30 teachers

4 https://sg.iwant2study.org/ospsg/index.php/events/455-20170125 for 30 teachers

Total of 120 teachers attended our 4 workshops.

Conference Paper:

García Clemente, F. J., Esquembre, F., & Wee, L. K. (2017). "Deployment of physics simulation apps using Easy JavaScript Simulations," 2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), Athens, 2017, pp. 1093-1096.

doi: 10.1109/EDUCON.2017.7942985. arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.00778.

4 Planning and Design

For Criteria for success, we propose measuring the degree of usefulness and willingness to continue using them after the funding period through survey and interviews.As for iterations, the PI will iterate the apps after SSTRF to ensure effectiveness of apps after funding period ends as was done in PI’s other apps found on earlier SSTRF-ETD_2012_01 Gravity Physics by Inquiry[2]

Currently, planned 4 apps, topics will be varied based on school needs (already prototype are time, numbers1 to 100, reading scale, nets of 3D), target audience are primary 1 to 5, schools/teachers involved with be as many as possible, minimum 2 classes per app is desired so that the app is improved to meet MOE’s school needs.

Samples of the designing thinking methodology is already available here as the project members empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test Math apps during and before-and-beyond the funding period. 

The screenshots below aim to provide the basic 3 or advanced 4* stage-approach of one such app.

• Stage A: Knowledge acquisition by watching video tutorials
• Stage B: Knowledge formation by inquiry/activity 
• Stage C: Knowledge construction by practice/discussion
• Stage D*[may be implemented where appropriate] : Knowledge extension by application/production

For this development project to be useful and relevant (Wee, Lee, Chew, Wong, & Tan, 2015), the apps will be open sourced[3A ICT scaling up framework] , so that other educators as well as students can modify, build on and re-share the refined versions of the apps for the benefit of all.

3 RELEVANCE TO MOE AND SINGAPORE

This MOE SSTRF is position more as an exploration to develop high quality Math Apps, focusing on getting the learning features/designs ‘relevance’ right, less on the social experiment to be ‘rigor of gold standard’. Thus the relevance of findings will be based on case studies of student’s feedback/interviews to improve the learning designs of the Math apps instead of control/experimental learning trials using the apps.