CCL-IITGN creates unique online content for Maths/Science to make the subjects engaging and interesting for students

Can you imagine teaching and learning the concepts and principles of Mathematics from dough and sticks, or an orange, or a rope, or a piece of paper, or a calendar, or even stories? The answer is a big YES! While online education has become the need of the hour amidst an unprecedented worldwide pandemic, the Centre for Creative Learning (CCL) at the IIT Gandhinagar - Indian Institute of Technology is utilising its innovative approaches and activities to train more and more Indian teachers to make online Mathematics course experiential and interesting for students.

In a recently concluded 12-day online in-service Mathematics course for Trained Graduate Teachers (TGTs) of Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS), about 50 class 6 to 10 Mathematics teachers from across the country joined to learn new ways of teaching Mathematics in a hands-on manner. Professor Manish Jain led the 60-hour online course along with his team to turn a drab subject into an exciting topic through engaging online interaction.

Underlining the importance of engaging teaching-learning content in online as well as face-to-face mode, Professor Manish Jain from CCL-IITGN said, “At first, I was very apprehensive about the engagement, given that it was an audit course and the schedule was intense. We were, however, able to engage most of our participants. The content was high school Mathematics but often went into areas that were beyond the curriculum and into exploratory problems. Online interaction can be effective provided the content is very engaging, inspiring. This is something that is required for teaching regardless of the medium; however, in an online mode, it is absolutely essential.”

During the online course, the CCL team covered Mathematical concepts such as Number system, Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry, 3D Geometry, Quadratic equations, and Probability through several innovative interactive activities, puzzles, quiz, and inspirational stories about mathematicians. The team devised engaging conceptual activities for effective online teaching, such as Mathematics with cards, doing Mathematical activities using A4 paper sheet, creating Mathematical structures from dough and sticks, counting the population of India on hands with binary counting, finger multiplication, multiplication with algebra, curve stitching, Geogebra, concept of pi using straight lines and matchsticks, concept of minimum surface area using soap bubble, and so on.

The pilot project supported by Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan received an overwhelming response and feedback from the participating teachers. The participants used to get engrossed so much that everyday the scheduled time of five hours used to extend by 30-45 minutes. The exercises were so engaging that the teachers would work on it even till late in the night or early morning. D Sujata Rao from KV no. 2, Indore, said, “I really liked the way the workshop was conducted with a flexible syllabus to suit the needs of the participants. It was better than offline because it really filled the gap between the resource person and the participant. There was clarity of the concept and the topic. After this workshop, my views toward teaching changed in a big way. I learnt that the teaching-learning process should be more creative, and students should be taught in a hands-on manner.”

Sharing his emotional moment and instant connect with the workshop,Sunil Kumar from KV Lakhisarai, said, “My son-in-law expired about a month back. I thank the CCL team because this online workshop is so engaging that I forget my sorrow for the time being. I could never imagine that a calendar can be used so effectively to teach Mathematics in the classroom. This workshop has given me the boost to come out of the chalk-and-talk method and use calendar, fingers, A4 sheets, playing cards and all sorts of materials to teach Mathematics in an engaging way. I have developed a childlike curiosity in this workshop.”

Sharing her experience from the online course, Ritika from KV Naleti, Gurugram, said, “In my eleven years of service, I found this in-service course the best among all. It gave me the vision to think how I can create interest in Mathematics in my students and see the logic behind mathematical concepts. Doing this kind of hands-on activities, every student can get rid of Mathematics phobia. I will definitely use these concepts in my class.”

Shri Santosh Kumar Mall (IAS), Commissioner of KVS, also attended one of the sessions for two hours and was very happy to see the unique techniques to teach Mathematics. Seeing the success of the pilot online workshop, KVS has approved three more such workshops with 3X (about 150) participants.

Professor Manish Jain also conducted a special online Masterclass for Indian Principals’ Network (IPA) on June 21, 2020, covering these and other Mathematical concepts through hands-on activities and online demonstration. The session was attended by 500 principals and teachers from across the country.

Coronavirus induced lockdown and disruption in academic activities across the globe has made academics think of new ways to engage students creatively. The team CCL was invited by the Science International Forum, Kuwait to conduct a five-day online workshop on hands-on Mathematics for class 8 to 12 CBSE school children in Kuwait. The workshop called ‘Fall in Love with Mathematics’ was attended by nearly 350 students. From June 21 to 25, 2020, the students were made to engage in creative mathematical activities like combinatorics with cards, Knotty Mathematics, 3D Geometry, Recreational Mathematics, and Mathematics with A4 sheet.

The participating school children found this workshop to be extremely engaging than the usual class lectures. Sharing his feedback, one of the class 10 students from Kuwait said, “I could learn hidden secrets of Mathematics in a more creative way during this workshop. Till now, I had no idea about how to implement these concepts in our daily lives. When I was finally able to make a cube with my three fingers I felt as happy as Archimedes crying Eureka, Eureka. I felt extremely happy when I could make a tetrahedron using fingers.”

All these workshop material, exercises, videos and recordings are part of a MOOC that anyone can watch. The user has to only send an email to cli@iitgn.ac.in to access it. CLL is also planning to scale this program for the benefit of a large number of teachers and students. 

About CCL:

The Center for Creative Learning came into being in April 2017, as a space that nurtures a scientific temper and the inherent creativity in students and teachers alike. The idea was, and remains, to immerse oneself in a subject in order to learn it, to do rather than read. We need to make our classes engaging, provide experiential learning, foster creativity and innovation with a sole focus on concepts. CCL has created 450+ unique STEM models and activities. It has conducted 70+ STEM and hands-on learning workshops for over 6,000 teachers and engineering college professors and interacted with about 50,000 students from all across the country. CCL’s mission is to bring back the gleam in the eyes!

Note: This article has been published on the basis of press communication by the college