THE STUDY OF COMPUTERIZED AIDED LEARNING OF MATHEMATICS FOR SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL
ABSTRACT
A lot of problems are associated with the traditional way of teaching mathematics because it uses manual approach to impact knowledge to student which makes it time ineffective, time wasting, and high level of energy dissipation. Also due to the calculative nature and vast scope of mathematics, some students develop loss of interest during classroom learning. Although computer aided learning of mathematics have been used in the past in the department of mathematics at Heriot- Watt University in Edinburgh in 1985 but was based on classroom lecture and was not interactive. In this new system l intend to reduce the problem student encounter during classroom learning by developing interactive tutor, which gives the student the feeling of being aided by a teacher to make learning easier, friendly and less stressful for student. Also to eliminate time wasted when educating people on mathematics. This project will use visual basic 6.0 for the implementation. This is because of its capabilities interface. It involves specifying the nature and structure of the database, the data being stored in the database and the data security measure enforced. The software is made up of set theory, algebra, and simple interest. The research methodology used helps to ensure that a thorough study of the present system is effectively carried out thus helping the project researcher to completely understand how the new system should be structured and the functionalities needed.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The term Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) covers a range of computer-based packages, which aim to provide interactive instruction usually in a specific subject area and many predate the internet. These can range from sophisticated and expensive commercial packages to applications developed by projects in other educational institutions or national initiatives to simple solutions developed by individuals with no funding or support to tackle a very local problem. The amount of time and money invested in development is high and partly because of the very subject specific nature of the education market as well as the very personalized nature of the teaching process- particularly at FE and HE level- means that commercial success is difficult to achieve and work done in one subject area rarely transfers to others subject areas.
In general, the use of computer in education through CAL has been sporadic a great deal of effort was expended with little general impact. Many of those academics that took part in that earlier crusade are now cynical about effectiveness of computers in teaching.
There are still good reasons to use CAL rather than internet based technologies. CAL is run either straight from a CD or floppy disk drive or over a local network so the constraint of the internet-slow download times for multimedia materials may not apply. This, couple with the fact that CAL technology has been around a bit longer, means that CAL packages have the potential to offer more advanced, interactive, multimedia learning experience than it is currently reasonable to expect from the web. This has been changing as web technologies develop and bandwidths improve but there are currently many things that can only be achieved with CAL rather than the web and CAL has been an integral part of the curriculum in many departments at Warwick for some time.
