MatheVital is a modular collection of interactive materials for math education available freely online. The materials are designed to provide a precise and visual experience to learners through simulation environments. The goals for the materials are to offer high interactivity, be comprehensive and encourage further research, work across different platforms, and be easy for lecturers to generate and integrate into their workflows. Both learners and lecturers can access the materials to support independent study and provide demonstration materials for classroom use.
1. MatheVital (visual interactive tools for advanced learning)
(http://www.mathe-vital.de)
Description:
MatheVital is a modular, freely accessible collection of interactive material for education in math-
related subjects. The material is linked not as much by common focus towards certain educational
units, but rather by the project’s overall philosophy: generating content of high quality and thereby
actually adding to the benefit of the computer as a medium. By means of appropriate simulation
environments, the provided material should offer to the learner a precise, very visual, quasi haptic
approach to usually abstract data. In the project, there are several objectives on designing material:
• Material is to offer a high level of interactivity
• Material is to be comprehensive, interrelated and encourage further research and questions
• Material is to be usable independent of platform via the internet
• For the lecturer, the process of generating material should be as easy as possible, embedded
in his/her normal workflow
• The material’s editing should reflect a high degree of professionalism
Those modules created in the context of MatheVital thus support the learner, providing material for
immersion in private study; the lecturer gains access to demonstration material which can be used in
class.
Type:
Access and integration into the university. The initiative is integrated into the TU Munich and
provides a WIKI for annotation, an open collection of applets and scripts. There is a high acceptance
because the tools and scripts re openly available and useful for visualization.
Features:
Both for learners and lecturers accessible. WIKI + Repository. The initiative is successful because it is
an additional initiative to the elearning activities of the faculty.