User Case Study:
Enriching Math Classes with Maple Learn at Edwin O. Smith High School

Susan Palmberg, a teacher at Edwin O. Smith High School in Connecticut, USA, has been a firm believer in the value of mathematics technology in the classroom for over 20 years. During the pandemic, she found herself in need of a solution that students could access both inside and outside of the school. At that time, she chose Maple Learn, the online math tool for exploring concepts, solving problems, and creating rich online math content, for her calculus class. What started as a stop-gap measure rapidly became her tool of choice. Two years later, with everyone back in the classroom, she continues to use Maple Learn for calculus, has adopted it in her multivariate calculus course, and is considering adding it to her geometry classes as well.

The Benefits Maple Learn Brings to Her Class

Palmberg uses Maple Learn for discovery, explorations, application, reinforcement, practice, and more. A typical lab activity consists of:

• Discovery. With Maple Learn taking care of the calculations and graphing, students can discover meaningful patterns on their own, which helps them learn important mathematical concepts. For example, they can look at graphs of the derivatives of trigonometric functions to learn the relationships, which they will internalize much more deeply than if they simply memorized them.
• Meaningful Applications. Realistic examples often involve prohibitively time-consuming calculations that make them unsuitable for classroom use, but Maple Learn enables Palmberg to set meaningful problems for her class to solve. The students are motivated by seeing how the math they are learning is actually useful in the real world, and they can stay focused on how to solve the problem instead of getting bogged down in the mechanics.
• Additional Supports. Palmberg frequently adds links in her lesson documents to additional resources in Maple Learn, such as more worked examples, practice questions, or reviews of concepts some students might need a refresher on. This way, the additional supports are easily available to students who need them, without distracting from the main lesson or taking up class time.

On their own, students use Maple Learn for:

• Checking Answers. Students still need to learn to solve problems by hand, but knowing if they got it right is immensely helpful in showing students what they do and do not understand, building their confidence, and highlighting areas they need to work on.
• Getting Help. If the student did not get the correct answer, Maple Learn’s Check My Work feature can analyze the student's full solution, point out where the student went wrong, and provide helpful feedback. This keeps students from getting stuck, and helps them distinguish between mechanical mistakes and a lack of understanding.
• Extra Practice. Maple Learn can generate practice problems, check the student’s response, and provide hints and feedback, so students can solve as many problems as they need to acquire the skill and the confidence that they have it.

Palmberg is especially appreciative of the fact that students can get help when she’s not there, as it not only keeps them productive and saves her time, but also reduces their math anxiety. When they get stuck on a homework problem, the students can even take a picture of their handwritten solution using the Maple Calculator app, and their worked solution appears in Maple Learn. From there, they can check each step or even ask Maple Learn where they went wrong. “Instead of feeling discouraged and frustrated when they get stuck on a problem, students can get help right away. How amazing is that?”

Why Maple Learn?

Palmberg originally decided to try Maple Learn because she needed a tool that students could access from outside the school’s lab. She has continued with Maple Learn now that students are back in the classroom for a variety of reasons, including:

• Quick Results. Her students love that all they need to do is enter the equation, and the graph appears – no commands to learn, or even buttons to press. When they change a parameter in the equation simply by moving a slider, the graphs update automatically. If they change the problem, the calculations are redone. This immediate feedback gives them the kind of instant gratification that many of them have learned to expect, and helps keep them engaged.
• Enlightening Visualization. The 2-D and 3-D graphs means students can actually see what they are working on, greatly aiding their understanding. Students find the 3-D graphs particularly exciting, and they develop insights at the same time they play with the visualizations.
• Anytime, Anywhere. While classes are in person again, her students have found that easy access to Maple Learn as they do their homework or study for a test is very valuable.
• Easy to Learn. The intuitive interface and the ability to provide students with template documents that they can modify to change the problem mean that her classes can start using Maple Learn incredibly quickly.
• Available Content. The ready-made lessons and activities in the Maple Learn Gallery provide her with content she can use in her classes, and they are easy to modify when she wants to customize a lesson or create a new activity.
• Excellent Support. Palmberg is extremely happy with the responsiveness of Maplesoft when she has questions or makes product suggestions.
• Prepare for the Future. Some of her students will continue to university, where they will likely be asked to use Maple, the powerful math tool that provides the mathematical power to Maple Learn. With Maple Learn experience, her students have a head start when it comes to becoming productive with Maple.

A Clear Success

Not only is Palmberg happy with Maple Learn, but her students also see its value.

“By the end of the year, when I give students an activity or project and tell them they can solve it however they wish, most often they will pull out Maple Learn,” says Palmberg. “I was looking for a math tool that wasn’t just good for teaching, but that the students themselves would find actively helpful. Maple Learn is clearly a success.”

Contact Maplesoft to learn how Maple Learn can be used in your classroom.