I’m a big fan of MyOpenMath!

Over the last few months, I’ve been working with Urban College of Boston and helping them develop one of their entry-level math courses. This task was certainly in my wheelhouse, and I loved everything about the course creation process (as an aside, I couldn’t have asked for a better collaboration team). One of the constraints I placed on myself when undertaking this project was to make the course as inexpensive as possible for the students. Ultimately, I wanted to leverage as many open-source solutions as possible. Working within this constraint allowed me to explore MyOpenMath and find ways to integrate the tool at UCB and beyond.

As you’ll see in the video below, the user interface is user-friendly, and creating the course only takes a few mouse clicks. Once the course has been made in MyOpenMath, we can dive into the vast question library to identify premade content that will fit our desired course outcomes. If, for some reason, we can not find the material needed for our course, it is also possible to create customized questions in MyOpenMath. Educators can add custom images to each question, and additional supports like YouTube videos and Desmos calculators can be embedded in the same window as the question text. Adding these embedded features is an excellent addition to the student’s learning experience as it places all the necessary supplemental material in one place. Limiting the number of hoops students must jump through to access pertinent learning material is crucial to minimizing the (unnecessary) cognitive strain placed on students.

In addition to using MyOpenMath as the primary assessment tool, we have also had conversations about how it can be used in lieu of the existing placement testing models. There are a variety of tools out there, most of which cost $$$. Finding a cost-effective alternative solution aligns with my overarching educational philosophy of minimizing the cost of higher education.

Another thing to consider when developing a new course is its impact on the department and the folks teaching within it. As a seasoned instructor, I’ve experienced situations where technological tools do not play well with one another, making teaching effectively more difficult. MyOpenMath has several integrations, which make it easy for the tool to play nicely with all the major players in the Learning Management System world. From Brightspace D2l to Moodle, MyOpenMath has got you covered. To date, I’ve integrated MyOpenMath into Canvas and Brightspace, and it was a relatively seamless process. I love that the grades automatically populate the grade book as the student completes the assignment.

This post is obviously a surface-level introduction to MyOpenMath, but I hope it opens the doors to creative thought and collaboration among your math department peers. I plan on introducing my high school teaching team to MyOpenMath this fall. Leveraging this open-source tool could be a game changer for many of my students. From students who struggle academically to students who want to dig a little deeper, I can use MyOpenMath to create a learning experience for students at each end of the spectrum and in between.

Just remember, the tool doesn’t take the place of good teaching; it only supplements it 😉