From failing to attaining: how adaptive technology is switching reluctant students on to maths

With technology a ubiquitous part of our lives — and digital literacy a key skill for the workforce both of today and the future — it makes sense to explore the potential for technology to improve both the teaching and learning experience. Yet for various reasons, the education sector globally has been argued to be relatively reluctant to push the boundaries. Technology that supports traditional teaching methods may have been universally embraced (PowerPoint, laptops for note-taking etc), but technology that transforms teaching practice has seen — if not a less warm reception — then at least less of a rush to open the door and usher it in.

Now, however, with the third decade of the 21st century looming, and new generations of students coming into the education system with radically different expectations, attitudes and habits than their forebears, many educators, including Janét, are beginning to look at this area more urgently.

One of the courses taught by Janét is a mathematics bridging course for students wanting to embark on a diploma in accountancy. With around 150 students enrolled each year, historically the course was poorly attended, had a not overly impressive pass rate, and was a huge headache for her as a teacher.

The course had to cover all of the topics that students were struggling with — and because these were quite diverse there was no single ‘off-the-peg’ resource that would cover all objectives, creating a heavy burden of labour on her to develop materials. With a range of levels of ability, it was impossible to pitch the level of teaching to be accessible to the whole class. Students were disengaged. It wasn’t working. With nothing to lose and much to be gained, Janét decided this course was the perfect candidate for trying out a new, innovative approach.

Janét brought-in ALEKS — an adaptive, artificially-intelligent learning system for Mathematics from McGraw-Hill Education, which works by establishing a baseline for each student, continually assessing strengths and weaknesses, and customising the pathway and content presented to each individual.

ALEKS only presents the topics a student is ready to learn and challenges them without frustrating or boring them. This results in tremendous learning momentum for each student and increases their confidence in maths. “It’s perfect for students who have various levels of maths literacy,” she confirms. And, as the system draws upon 20–40 syllabi, Janét was able to ‘virtually’ compose the wide-ranging course materials easily and efficiently.

The results were phenomenal. “I’ve only been implementing this for 6 months,” she says, “but the difference is already immense. I used to sit in front of empty classrooms — now I’m getting 130–140 of the 155 registered students turning up on a Thursday morning at 8.00a.m, working, being quiet. For me that is awesome.” She stresses the 8.00a.m part as evidence of students’ motivation. “As a voluntary class they don’t have to come, but they do.”

Rather than being used for transmission teaching to a half-empty room of students who don’t want to listen, the 1.5 hour weekly timetabled slot for this course is now used for online practice and study — although sometimes Janét will take a portion of the class time to explain concepts they are still struggling with.

“And they’re not just doing it for one and a half hours a week. I can see that some students are logging in for several hours per week, including evenings and weekends. At the other end of the scale I can see those who are logging in for less than the required time, or not at all, and that enables me to send them messages through the system, to keep going back to them because I know who they are.”

The percentage of students passing the initial course over the year went up from 63% to 77%, which was such an enormous jump that she wondered if she had made it too easy, so she lifted the class level.

And still, the pass rate from subsequent tests has been coming in higher than in previous years by around 5%. With assessments run entirely through ALEKS there is no marking to do — the system keeps track of marks as the test progresses and give immediate feedback to the student.

Janét loves the analytics reports from ALEKS, which give a breakdown per question, allowing her to see where students are struggling and therefore offer additional support to help them understand and practise particular topics with, for example, training videos.

The system will also keep coming back to topics until they have been mastered. “If [students] don’t understand the question they can click and ALEKS gives them step by step instructions. If they still don’t understand, they can ask for another instruction and the system will come at it from another angle. You can link out to a textbook for further reading as well.”

The fact that ALEKS is accessible at anytime from anywhere is another benefit for Janét — with students still able to do the work even during the bus strikes that prevented students from getting to class. And the technology has a further benefit: students sitting next to each other during a test will see different questions, eliminating any temptation to cheat.

But isn’t technology like ALEKS doing the teacher out of a job? The answer is an emphatic ‘no’. What it does do is free the teacher up to do the higher order teaching; to understand exactly what problems individuals in the class might be facing and tackle them.

It is the combination of the system analytics and excellent teaching that works so well. On this subject, Janét has one closing thought about the evolving future of education: “We need to do more for our students that a computer can do. If a computer can replace a lecturer, it should. It’s down to us to make sure it can’t replace us.”

Janét West is a lecturer at the University of Johannesburg in the Department of Commercial Accounting. Her research interests are in Accounting Education, specifically: improvement of student engagement, better assessment practices, and lifelong learning. We caught up with her at our recent event in South Africa where she told us about the transformational effect of adaptive technology on the engagement and success of students studying for their accountancy diploma.