Graspable Math

Math is beautiful and tremendously powerful in the hands of experts. On the other hand, for many students, math is frustrating and HARD....All those rules to memorize. All those steps to write and keep track of. In a time of powerful digital tools and online learning, most feel the easiest way to write and solve an equation is still by hand, on paper. We love paper, but shouldn't computers and touchscreens provide intuitive and fluid interfaces for math instead of getting in the way?

To make algebraic work experiential, a group of math educators, psychologists, mathematicians, and computer scientists - have developed Graspable Math (GM), algebra notation reconstructed for the digital space.  GM is a dynamic algebra notation tool that allows users to manipulate algebraic expressions and observe an immediate response to their mouse actions (e.g., dragging and dropping) or touchpad gestures. Thanks to GM, making algebraic transformations no longer needs to be an arbitrary, rule-driven process, but instead the demonstration of one’s structural intuition. In GM, algebraic expressions turn into interactive objects and support students in flexible reasoning, exploring structure, and inquiring into how math works. 

To learn more about GM, please visit the official Graspable Math's website. www.graspablemath.com

Graspable Math is an interactive dynamic software that features many capabilities aimed towards helping students learn Algebra.  Under several grants provided by the US Department of Education to Graspable, the goal is to design and develop a research-based software that accessible and is ready to assist students in their learning experience with math. WPI has been a research partner on these projects. 

Using the GM as a foundation, Graspable is developing Graspable Math Activities (GMA) - a student activity app with novel kinds of algebra practice and assessment tasks. With the goal of supporting both students and teachers in the journey of learning and teaching algebra, the activities in GMA promotes procedural fluency while allowing students to focus on strategy and the connection between concepts and procedures. Go to activities.graspablemath.com 

GMA lets you find and share activities with a teacher community, let’s you assign them to students, 

and see their live step-by step work!

Because the  GMA app is intended to supplement, not replace classroom teaching, the primary goal is to help teachers create their own customizable content to integrate the app into their classroom practice. The research at WPI is intended to study the iterative design, usability, and feasibility of these dynamic teacher tools in classrooms. The 5 targets of the Graspable Math Activities Website are to:

1. 1. familiarize teachers with GM gestures and activity task types,

   2. provide resources to teachers to help them create their own GMA activities for their students,

   3. facilitate the implementation and integration of GM algebra activities into their classroom discourse, 

   4. relate the intended learning outcomes of the algebra activities,

   5. reflect on how to use the teacher dashboard.

More information about the SBIR project can be found at  our Graspable Math Activities (GMA) project webpage.