Cornell Mathematics Instructional Technology is dedicated to supporting the use of technology to improve learning in Mathematics both inside and outside the classroom. The support that we can offer is currently very flexible, and can be significantly tailored to suit the needs of individual instructors. Some examples of our current activities include:

• Support for the use of Maple TA for mathematics classes. Maple T.A. offers a Web-based system for creating tests, assignments, and exercises, automatically assessing student responses and performance. Maple T.A. supports complex, free-form mathematics notation and intelligent evaluation of responses. For more about how the math department is currently using MapleTA, and some possibilities for your class, see the MapleTA Tutorial.
• Support for Math instructors who want to use the Blackboard Course Management System to help organize their class, student grades, and communication. The Blackboard system offers template class web pages which easily allow instructors to chose different types of functionality. The most popular use so far is to keep students grades, so that either the instructor or the teaching assistant can update them at any time, and so that students can see their own grades at any time. This system also makes it very easy to send e-mail to the whole class or to individual students. For more about this type of support, see Blackboard Tutorial.
• Support for the in-class polling system being used by the Calculus Good Questions project. In connection with this project, any math instructor can receive support to create questions to pose in class via computer projector, and have student responses collected and stored automatically . For more about this project, see the Good Questions Project Webpage or the H-ITT Webpage.
• Support for in-class demonstrations of three-dimensional geometric graphing. We have a laptop and projector which can be borrowed for use anywhere on campus for in-class demonstrations. We can also assist instructors in creating these demonstrations, for example, with Maple.

Last modified: February 14, 2005