One year after the end of the MOOC

One year after the end of the MOOC, a questionnaire was administered to all 503 MOOC registrants. We have collected 52 answers.

Also who did not finish the MOOC (12/52) was invited to answer and emerged that the reasons why they were not able to complete the MOOC were mostly health reasons or other commitments.

The questionnaire aims to investigate what kind of use the teachers had made of MathCityMap.

52 responses were collected, although in some sections the number of respondents is lower.

During the year, 44 teachers made the following use of MathCityMap: 30 respondents said that they had used MathCityMap outdoors with their students, using trails created on the web portal; 11 using existing trails on the web portal and 5 to involved students in competitions. 7 respondents stated that they had used MathCityMap in the MCM@home modality and only one manifested not to be teaching, so it was not possible to use MathCityMap with students. 

Of these 44 respondents, 22 stated that they had created tasks. In particular, 9 created between 2 and 5 tasks; 5 created between 6 and 10 tasks and another 5 created between 11 and 15 tasks. One reported creating 9 tasks and another answered to have created a task, as an example, and corrected 11 tasks built by teachers who took a course on MathCityMap.

With regard to trails, of the 44 respondents, 25 answered that they created trails. In particular, 18 of them specified how many trails they produced:  9 created  1 trail; 8 created between 2 and 5 trails and one between 6 and 10 trails. Of these 18, 15 said they had run them with their students.

All 44 teachers Agree or Strongly Agree that they can guide themselves in the web portal and that creating tasks is intuitive. Regarding the creation of the trails, learning how the MCM web portal works, and the creation of outdoor tasks, most of them Agree or Strongly Agree. The same happened regarding the interaction between the web portal, the app, the usefulness of creating the pdf version and the Task Wizard. Concerning the narratives, the majority acknowledged that they increase students’ motivation to do mathematics outdoors, but this time there were 11 who disagreed. Although using the Digital Classroom was intuitive for most, 13 participants disagreed. Finally, 28 of the participants agreed that they use the MOOC to review some resources, while 17 admitted not to.

The Digital Classroom (DC)was a feature used by 10 respondents. In particular, with respect to the use and management of the DC, the respondents expressed themselves as follows: 8 out of 10 (of which 5 agree and 3 strongly agree) found it easy to divide the students into groups and provide them with the necessary materials to run the trail; for all of them it was easy to monitor the students via the DC; with respect to the usefulness of monitoring the students with the DC we observe that 1 strongly disagreed, 3 disagreed, the remaining split equally between agreeing and strongly agreeing. Finally, for 9 respondents the students enjoyed doing mathematics outdoors, while 1 strongly disagrees. In relation to the messaging functions that the DC offers to students, we observe that writing messages is the practice that students take most notice of, although 5 say their students do it but rarely, 1 says sometimes and 2 often. Sending photos is a practice that only 2 teachers report is done often by their students (the remaining 8 say never). Audios are never used, except for one teacher who states that his students sent them often.  When monitoring their students via the DC, most teachers see their movements on the map sometimes (3) and often (5). Almost no teachers focus on individual groups via the event window: only 3 teachers say they do it often. Responding to students’ messages via chat is a widespread practice in proportion to the way students write on the chat (as we saw in the previous question). Teachers use with varying frequency (from never to always) the possibility of writing chat messages to all groups at the same time. Finally, reaching out to someone who is struggling with a task is a practice most do sometimes (4) or often (2).

44 teachers answered the question “Are you planning to use MathCityMap in the future?”. 36 of them state that they are planning to use the tool in the future, whereby the eight remaining teachers do not know yet. None of the teachers state that they will NOT use MathCityMap in the future. From the answers of the eight teachers that are still not sure whether they want to use MathCityMap in the future, we can identify the following reasons:

– Waiting for collaboration with colleagues/schools

– Lack of time

– Retirement

– Corona pandemic situation and limitations

We can conclude that, in terms of the impact achieved, the MOOC has enabled hundreds of users to register and participate. Indeed, it was possible to reach a massive number of teachers to spread the project’s objective. In addition, teacher-participants were guided to analyse and review their practice with the support of the MOOC, gaining accreditation, improving their ability to create outdoor math trails, and gathering evidence of the impact on students. This professional development of the teacher-participants triggered a positive cascade effect, ensuring an effective follow-up of the project even after its official conclusion.