Adapting Personalized Learning Platforms

Mathematics teachers who are now teaching online, report that they notice a growing gap between the synchronous lessons and the homework assignments. In the plenary classroom lesson, the microphones of the students are typically muted, while the teacher lectures by talking and demonstrating on a shared screen. From time to time, the teacher allows for Q&A by using the chat box or by assigning specific students the option of using their microphones.

Not all students have access to video cameras on their computer and some prefer to close the video stream, either on the PC or smartphone. Many teachers claim that they find it very difficult to engage all the students in the learning process and it is even harder to monitor their progress. They report that these are specific challenges that require explicit tools and customized content.

As a result, some teachers prefer to instruct their students to learn the content of the lesson by themselves, via video recordings. Then they try to use the whole class gatherings to discuss difficulties and to dive deeper into more advanced content. In this scenario, they stress that validating student comprehension is problematic, and that they tend to lose contact with many students.

In order to assist teachers in bridging this gap and allowing them to reach a more effective flow, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, we turned to the 8200 Alumni Association. Three years ago, the association created the ‘PIE Challenge’ that harnessed seven educational start-ups which developed personalized learning platforms for the teaching and learning of mathematics at the five-unit level.

8200 Alumni Association proposes to ask three of their portfolio start-ups to adapt their platforms to the teaching of root function and probability in tenth grade. The three platforms that are considered are: AliChat, that provides students with online advice while learning at home by using AI algorithms; META, that diagnoses the learning progress, difficulties and learning habits of each student, and; TAILOR-ED, that analyses the classroom and proposes division of the students into smaller groups for more effective learning.

The three start-ups will work with the 150 teachers who are planned to participate in the pilot program that the Ministry of Education plans to execute, in collaboration with the foundation, from Passover until the end of the year. In addition, the 8200 Alumni Association will prepare a web-based portal of online contents and teaching tools, and provide online support to the teachers.

* The text presented above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation Board / Grant 396