Mathematics Teaching in the New Era – Online Classes and Tutorials

Ever since the coronavirus pandemic broke out in 2020, it has taken the world by storm. All parts of one’s daily life have been affected, including work, social life, gatherings and events, etc. However, one of the most significant areas that have undergone a rapid and huge transformation is education and learning. Online tuitions have become more common these days.  Online maths classes have gained much popularity after e-learning became a necessity rather than an option.

The constraints of being at home have pushed many systems to expand their boundaries and explore remote options for working and learning. While most offices have been shut for more than a year now, allowing employees to work from home, schools and colleges are also leveraging online teaching portals to ensure the continuity of students’ learning. Here, we are not discussing how it has happened but how it transforms learning, specifically in mathematics, for the better.

Online maths classes – a way to eradicate maths phobia

Maths is often viewed as one of the most difficult subjects by most of the students. Due to several rules, formulas, and endless concepts based on understanding and logic, some students fear maths and believe it is a hectic task. However, this is surely not the case. For someone who understands the concept and logic, mathematics is more like a game or a puzzle. Once you start developing interest, you’ll be motivated to practice and solve more problems every day. Now, the traditional mode of teaching has been concentrating on pen and paper or oral mode of teaching, but with e-learning coming into the picture, the use of technology and its potential to transform the education system continues to be explored.

Schools are offering live maths classes ‘online tuitions’ or on which help in one-on-one interaction between student and teacher. This also ensures that parents are more involved in their child’s study and greatly track it. ‘Online maths classes’ are surely helping students not lagging behind their practice amid the pandemic and even helping them to take up new challenges while being at home. Online tuitions, as said, have become a necessity rather than an option now. This has deconstructed the boundaries of the traditional education system and has revamped it to include more technological interventions.

Helping students learn at their own pace.

Online classes these days use a wide variety of tools or learning management systems that help each student learn at their own pace. This is particularly beneficial in the case of mathematics. Maths is one of the subjects where each student requires their own time and speed to understand the concept and logic. While some may get it clear with just a few practice questions or assignments, some may need to put in a little extra effort as well as time to take a grasp. This discrepancy is well covered through ‘online teaching portals’ like Kapdec, where students are offered an end number of unique questions and assignments to practice for a particular topic. And as we all know, practice makes a man perfect. In the case of mathematics, practice is the only key to success.

Customizing maths learning through online teaching portal

Mathematics online classes push students to practice more as they are on their screens, having endless options to discover while the teacher, too, has a great number of resources to use. They can also curate the assignments or question banks as per each student’s caliber and understanding. For example, suppose some students need more time to understand and become better. In that case, the teacher can customize a separate question bank for them in ‘mathematics online classes’ while allowing other students to practice difficult ones based on their levels. This way, customization of education, especially maths, has been achievable through online classes or online teaching portals.

Online teaching portals are also loaded with a lot of audiovisual content for students to learn from. It is also a notable fact that audiovisuals increase the learning capability of students considerably. Also, with a lot of content for different levels available, tutors or teachers can customize a set of videos or tutorials for students based on their understanding level and advise them to go through it multiple times. Once the teacher is convinced that the student has understood the concept, they can take them ahead with higher levels. This way, customizing education for each student becomes easier and also efficient. It takes lesser time yet yields great results.

Online classes helping parents to get more involved in their child’s education

Students can revisit the old modules in their online maths classes when they doubt and further clear them with their teacher in live maths classes or online tuitions. This is a great way to generate an end-to-end learning system where both student and teacher are involved actively. Also, enabling parents to become more active, interested and involved in their child’s education through online tuitions unifies the three important aspects of education for a child – family, school and peer and intelligence. This is exactly what Kapdec aims at doing with its learning management system.

Helping students, teachers and parents have access to multiple resources helps them become an active part, and with an efficient system of evaluation and progress, it helps all three of them have a clear picture of the child’s progress and their challenges. This way, they can also help the child in their way to overcome the challenges that they might be having. Unifying these three pillars of education, the learning management system also helps make better decisions for a child’s future assessments.

Offering wide inclusion through technology

Since the use of technology for live maths classes or “online tuitions“, location is not a constraint anymore. Anyone from any part of the world can attend classes they always wanted to. For example, many courses were previously available in a particular school or institution in a particular city. Many people from different cities could not pursue that course due to location constraints. But with online classes, the world is now on your screen! Considering the other way round, it is beneficial for tutors as well. This does not include concern mathematics but any topic being instructed online. Online teaching does not need teachers to confine themselves to the local students. They, therefore, have greater flexibility to set up a classroom full of students with similar skills, irrespective of their location. This way, technology or eLearning offers a wide inclusion in the education system and is surely changing its landscape for the better.

Easy accessibility of resources

Another key aspect of online mathematics classes is easy and wide accessibility to many resources. With the entire education system going online since last year, many education portals or online teaching portals have made several resources easily available on their website. The CBSE online portal has also provided many online resources and supportive study material to students. This helps them to accumulate many different, easily accessible study resources on their screens.

CBSE online portal provides many question banks and study materials for students, which are easily available. It is also updated with the revised curriculum to help students pace up with the latest syllabus.  Other than the CBSE online portal, there are many websites or learning management systems for online mathematics classes available that help students get multiple resources for a single topic very easily.

Infusing fun into learning

Visual mathematics extends beyond student participation. Research shows it to be essential for the learning of mathematics. For example, Stanford University’s neuroscientists research how the brain mathematically works, and data suggest that even in the computation of symbolic numbers, visual pathways are involved. Therefore, including audiovisual tutorials or teaching modules for mathematics in online maths classes can greatly help students increase their mathematical efficiency and learning power. It is a great way to amalgamate fun and learning as well.

As gamification of mathematics is highly becoming popular, it is a very helpful initiative, especially for kids who are too young to understand complex concepts; solving maths questions or logic problems through games helps students become more active and engaged. This subconsciously helps them in understanding the concept way better than traditional learning. Therefore, many technological interventions in “online maths classes” help recreate the education landscape and make it more flexible and better for students. The right use of technology, however, always remains a clause when making these affirmative statements.  When the pandemic has locked both students and teachers in their homes, we are pushed to explore and discover technology for education to its full potential.