Few notes from MapleTA March 25th presentation.
Platform is the most spectacular, way ahead then any other alternative (WebAssign, WileyPlus). In math content creation it is ahead of competitors probably by few degrees.
Platform has all the usual online homework features. Content organization, navigation, reporting is equivalent to other competitors (Blackboard integration available as well). What makes MapleTA to stand out is content creation. Platform allows to create content all the way from click and drag user friendly high level interface down to raw coding and tweaking geeky levels. A very rich usage of variables, images as variables, access to maple engine core (with spectacular 3D graphing, all the calculating power, symbolic math) are all there. Platform can interface with adobe flash, one can create visual problems (way richer then publisher compiled WebAssign can offer). In one word, it is state of art of online math assignments.
The price for platform is $200 installation + $16 pa per student (hosted by MapleTA). Interestingly this is half price of WebAssign access that we are currently asking students to pay for. Beyond the pilot further discounted pricing schemes are available (especially if hosted by the university). It has many of the same features we are seeking in TutorTracks. The practice problems will be available to OUL students, will be reusable and can be incorporated in the KB database much the same way as other sources could be. It doesn't have to be TutorTracks project, but probably worth mentioning. Athens math department is one possible partner to get engaged in this project.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
OLN update
I thought to post OLN online tutoring options that Karen Boyd explained during today's teleconference.
Ohio State subsidy expires July 2011, it subsidizes price of SmartThinking tutoring from $29 to $21 per hour and there are only ~500 minutes left. There is a good chance those will be gone too in couple of moths. SmartThinking is currently used in Athens, contact person for it is Pam Brown @ OU.
Another option with OLN is their inHouse eTutoring platform, which is relatively new (started this January). Essentially this is a collaborative scheme, where all participants provide 5hours/week tutor time (those could be our on-campus existing student tutors, payed by us) and get 100 sessions/quarter for it (more can be purchased if needed). There is also a fixed annual fee of $2'500. They use AdobeConnect interface and sessions are manually saved (and can be databased and linked) at a hosting providers (Connecticut) servers.
Not all subjects have tutors available at 24/7. We discussed if beyond participating in collaborative we could use their platform to have our existing on-campus tutors operate online channel as well, during daytime (instead of doing that in BlackBoard or elsewhere). Answer at this point is unclear, we'll be following this up with hosting provider's contact.
eTutoring doesn't enforce "one student per one tutor at a time" policy, but they allow group sessions.
OLN is part of OSU, but reports directly to reagents and often act as a state education agency.
Advisory counsil of participating institutions is scheduled to meet May 10, where we will be invited too (even though not participating. ).
eTutoring is undoubtedly cheaper then commercial alternatives (by degree). But this comes at a price of somewhat sparser schedule (not all subjects covered 24/7) and somewhat poorer interface (at least for the moment, when project is just starting). We discussed the pilot nature of our interest and they are encouraging our approach to consider multiple providers while exploring habit formation on OUL campus. Their collaborative scheme has a chance to fit well with what we envisaged as "Basic Tier" of our online tutoring, the one based on inHouse resources.
I will also follow up this report with some institutional specific information over the email.
Ohio State subsidy expires July 2011, it subsidizes price of SmartThinking tutoring from $29 to $21 per hour and there are only ~500 minutes left. There is a good chance those will be gone too in couple of moths. SmartThinking is currently used in Athens, contact person for it is Pam Brown @ OU.
Another option with OLN is their inHouse eTutoring platform, which is relatively new (started this January). Essentially this is a collaborative scheme, where all participants provide 5hours/week tutor time (those could be our on-campus existing student tutors, payed by us) and get 100 sessions/quarter for it (more can be purchased if needed). There is also a fixed annual fee of $2'500. They use AdobeConnect interface and sessions are manually saved (and can be databased and linked) at a hosting providers (Connecticut) servers.
Not all subjects have tutors available at 24/7. We discussed if beyond participating in collaborative we could use their platform to have our existing on-campus tutors operate online channel as well, during daytime (instead of doing that in BlackBoard or elsewhere). Answer at this point is unclear, we'll be following this up with hosting provider's contact.
eTutoring doesn't enforce "one student per one tutor at a time" policy, but they allow group sessions.
OLN is part of OSU, but reports directly to reagents and often act as a state education agency.
Advisory counsil of participating institutions is scheduled to meet May 10, where we will be invited too (even though not participating. ).
eTutoring is undoubtedly cheaper then commercial alternatives (by degree). But this comes at a price of somewhat sparser schedule (not all subjects covered 24/7) and somewhat poorer interface (at least for the moment, when project is just starting). We discussed the pilot nature of our interest and they are encouraging our approach to consider multiple providers while exploring habit formation on OUL campus. Their collaborative scheme has a chance to fit well with what we envisaged as "Basic Tier" of our online tutoring, the one based on inHouse resources.
I will also follow up this report with some institutional specific information over the email.
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