Publishing Mathematics Challenges & Tasks About PISA

Several months ago, the foundation approved a unique pilot venture with the goal of exposing 15-year-old students to skills-based proficiency tasks in mathematics. The intention is that the tasks will be aligned with those of the PISA examinations, which will take place in March 2018. Presentense, a nonprofit organization, encouraging grass root social initiatives across the country was chosen to develop and lead the challenges, and experts from CET are consulting on the construction of PISA-like assignments around chosen themes.

So far, Presentense has conducted eight focus groups with 15-year-olds all over the country and identified subjects that interest them the most as soccer, music, social causes, technology, and fashion. Currently, they are developing the competitions around these topics, and building partnerships with the Ministry of Education and hi-tech companies. The competitions will be active from January to April 2018, and their imminent task will be to catch the attention of as many 15-year-olds in Israel as possible.

In order to do this, Presentense is proposing to launch a number of targeted media campaigns, with various partners, each addressing different topics within youth culture. The focus groups revealed that the primary media consumption for this age group is through social networks, such as Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. These social networks have their own “stars” and opinion leaders, known as “influencers”. Therefore, the plan is to collaborate with leading Israeli youth influencers and use them to create a buzz around the competitions.

A mutli-platform media campaign will include the creation of a YouTube gameshow, with a special episode dedicated to each of the five challenges. Gameshow contestants will be leading YouTube “influencers”, who will publicize the show to their hundreds of thousands of teenage followers. Video campaigns by leading role models such as soccer stars, fashionistas, and hi-tech industry leaders will be produced in order to encourage participants to persevere with the challenges.

Additionally, partnerships with leading TV broadcasters, such as Keshet and the Sports Channel will be created to expose the challenges to parents; to motivate them to encourage their children to participate in the competitions; and to invite them to solve real-life mathematics problems themselves.   For example, selected challenges will be referred to on prime time television shows such as “Israel’s Got Talent”. A special team of professional media analysts will provide real-time monitoring on the reach of the campaign and its engagement rates, to maximize the impact of each campaign activity.

This campaign will take place not only in the digital and media spheres, but through direct marketing campaigns as well. Presentense will produce creative activities in at least 30 large schools across Israel, encouraging students to take part in the challenges. The ‘social causes’ challenge, which is being developed in partnership with Ministry of Education, will also be disseminated directly in schools in order to raise awareness among both students and teachers.

We aim for the campaign to attract tens of thousands of 15-year-olds to the competitions and motivate them to try to tackle the real-world mathematics assignments outside the classroom.

* The text presented above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation Board / Grant 276