Teaching K-12 Math Online: Reasoning Mind CEO Alex Khachatryan (Part 3)

SM: Tell me more about your design principles. What are the core principles of the system?

AK: The first shift was moving towards a curriculum program versus a math club environment. We also knew we had to deliver our curriculum to students in a very interactive way. We decided to take a curriculum that had been proven effective in other countries like the Soviet Union and build and expert system to deliver the curriculum to students. Ideally, each student would be taught as if an experienced tutor or teacher was giving the student a private lesson. Concepts would be explained and assignments made.

All information coming back into the system from the student could then be recorded. All data could be captured. This allows us to have a prior record of the student’s performance. The student’s navigation through the content of the curriculum is determined by their performance. That was the underlying idea.

SM: I have found that skill gap analysis in K-12 mathematics is a big issue. Teachers instruct a lot of students in one class and have a very limited grasp of skill gap analysis. If a kid gets a C in pre-algebra, then they have a good chance of getting a D in algebra.

AK: Absolutely. That is one of the reasons that we did a lot of research before deciding what grade level to start with. There was actually plenty of research on this topic readily available. We paid a lot of attention to tracking down the root cause of the problems kids in this country are having with math and science education. All of our research told us that in elementary schools our kids are doing well. Performance begins to dive in middle school and high school in comparison to students in other countries.

SM: One of the common theses for this problem is that teachers are not properly trained to educate math and science courses. There are known cases in which unqualified teachers are instructing math and science courses in both middle schools and high schools.

AK: That is true. They do not come from a math background and they have very little idea of what mathematics teaching is. In our country only 30% of math teachers have a degree in mathematics, and I am liberal with that number because that includes minors as well as majors. In comparison, that number is around 80% in other countries that are doing a much better job than us in math education. Math teachers are not properly trained or qualified to be teaching mathematics in many cases.

My hope was that if we started at the end of elementary school it would give us enough runway to pick up those kids before they are a couple of years behind. We could then take them through a good curriculum, and at the same time we could help teachers get the knowledge and skills that they need to continue teaching those kids. The idea is not to replace teachers but to provide them with tools that they can use in their classrooms which would help them overcome deficiencies they may have in their math education and teaching preparation.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Teaching K-12 Math Online: Reasoning Mind CEO Alex Khachatryan
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