Find or create an interactive app for doing LE2

[StevenClontz]

Okay if there's one thing I'm okay with a computer helping students with, it's practicing and demonstrating understanding of how to find an RREF, rather than writing these steps out where it's too easy for both the student and instructor to miss subtle errors.

I still want to maintain the CheckIt exercise for this, but an alternative practice/assessment that's more interactive would be quite helpful for all parties involved here I think.

[siwelwerd]

Something like this? Where they still have to think through the process, but the arithmetic tedium is automated away?

http://breazeal.com/matrix/#/matrix

[StevenClontz]

Hmm, I actually was thinking I wanted them to do the arithmetic as well as denote which row operation they were doing.

BUT I think this is better: make them fix the matrices in Part 1 by hand, showing the calculations there. Then they can use the assistant to just pick row operations in part 2.

[StevenClontz]

We cannot rely on that app directly unless we find it online with an open license, in which case I'd rehost it somewhere we can maintain. But it's good inspiration anyway.

[siwelwerd]

Hmm, maybe you are talking about assessments an I was thinking about the in-class activities.

And agreed on the licensing, just thought it was a nice proof-of-concept.

[StevenClontz]

Oh this kind of thing would be useful for in-class activities too. But yes, I'm also thinking that I'd like an interactive tool for assessing RREF calculations, at least as an option.

[StevenClontz]

Putting a pin in this: https://glmatrix.net/

EDIT: ah, that might be restricted to 3D matrices (for graphics purposes)

[StevenClontz]

From a student reflection on this quiz. Need to do something about this someday...

I took the quiz twice. Because the first time the 4 problem was insanely difficult. I still haven’t solved. But I spent days working on it. Eventually I wanted to double check that I got the number written correctly, and I saw the quiz timed out. When I clicked on it to start a new one gave me a new question. That was insultingly easy in comparison. A little annoyed.

[siwelwerd]

Or do we instead need to work to control the difficulty imbalances in variants of the relevant CheckIt?

[StevenClontz]

I think that's a fine stopgap.

[StevenClontz]

Less pithy response now that I'm less in a rush: finding a clever way to produce interesting and more consistent matrices is a great improvement to status quo. But I still think that this particular task is actually one of the situations where the student doesn't benefit as much from me reviewing their steps post-facto, compared with a theoretical app to guide them through practicing and demonstrating competency in the skill.

[siwelwerd]

I tend to agree, but mostly am wondering how many instructors in general would agree and want to go this way versus a better functioning (i.e. perceived as more "fair") version of what we already have.

[StevenClontz]

Ah, sure. I don't think we should remove it from the bank in any situation, so it's worthwhile to improve the matrix generation. I'll make a separate issue to track that.