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Problems Posed by Mathematical Notation in E-Learning: Transcription and Edition of Formulae Teresa SANCHO-VINUESA Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) Rambla del Poblenou 156, 08018 Barcelona , Spain and
Antoni PÉREZ-NAVARRO Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) Rambla del Poblenou 156, 08018 Barcelona, Spain
ABSTRACT Students of mathematics have many problems in their process of learning and, it is most likely that Mathematical language is the principal cause of it. Specific terms and notation can be very hard for most of them. In distance learning environments, the problem is especially significant. Being aware of this situation, the engineering studies department at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) have developed some applications which do not completely solve the problem, but ease it somewhat. On the one hand, a formula editor for the Virtual Campus email of the university has been implemented; on the other, a tool for the automatic transcription of mathematical formulae for web material has been introduced. Keywords: Science and Mathematical Notation, Transcription, MathML.
Mathematics eLearning,
Education; Automatic
1. INTRODUCTION The specific theories regarding the Teaching-Learning processes of Mathematics can address key issues such as teaching strategy in the classroom, teacher training or curriculum development, with the help of sciences such as the history of mathematics, psychology, sociology and pedagogy. Furthermore, it is fundamental to deal with the problem related to its language of expression and communication: mathematical notation. Indeed, mathematical language has always characterized the learning of contents of this area; however, the use of the computer has introduced new challenges that are particularly critical in online education. Science and mathematics students at all levels of education are using a nomenclature that is not natural for them and is part and parcel of the idiosyncrasy of the subject they are tackling. The use of electronic tools has
highlighted the importance of this handicap: since keyboards are alphanumeric, only the natural language is available for digital communication. It is therefore an added difficulty for students to make transcriptions of mathematical symbols, writing down mathematical formulae (in an email, for instance), labelling variables, etc. Students of engineering studies have, in general, certain difficulties in achieving the goals of the different subjects. In distance and online studies, this difficulty is compounded by the profile of students who are older than the average student in traditional face-to-face universities and have full or part-time jobs as well as family responsibilities and their prior knowledge of maths is often insufficient [1][2]; furthermore, students find the content hard to grasp and therefore their motivation is low. Mathematical notation is necessary and is part and parcel of this type of studies, but this is an element that represents an additional difficulty for students. They often do not even know how to read a formula and have serious difficulties in writing them down with the usual digital resources. This last factor is particularly significant for distance studies, where student-tutor and student-student interaction is only in writing. All these difficulties pose a language barrier to the acquisition of knowledge and skills in areas requiring scientific and technical nomenclature and notation. 2. SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM Mathematics content delivery has gone in the last thirty years from “chalk on blackboard” and manual typesetting to TeX and LaTeX typesetting ―that represented a revolution indeed―. Then came the wysiwyg editors, as MathType® and now mathematics content is moving to a web based model. When writing a formula, two aspects have to be taken into account: content and presentation. The first one indeed deals with the meaning of the components, as for example if an “
