“Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.” — David Hilbert
Introducing mathematics is structured academic environments has been a luxury affored by living in a country like the United States. However, it was only under the right mentoring and opportunities that I have been able to be as excited as I am now about mathematics. As such, I would like to bring this opportunity forward for other students.
STACK
I have been fortunate enough to work with a fantastic team of people in collaboration with Franca Hoffmann to integrate the STACK software for the first time in a Caltech course. This software is an assessment system that serves as a “teaching assistant” without the use of AI, using specifically encoded decision trees to give personalized feedback on randomized variants of questions that allow for algebraic responses in an interpretable language. STACK is currently being used in partner institutions across Africa and Europe, with a rapidly growing community to contribute to this open source project.
The reason for this adoption is that owing to the large classroom sizes in these universities, it is difficult for the instructional team to give personalized feedback on students. As such, STACK acts as a surrogate education companion through its feedback, which can then be investigated in regular office hours if there is still confusion. I hope to continue getting more familiar with the platform, and plan to keep you updated on this different direction of math pedagogy research!
Other Activities
I also hope to get engaged with Math Co-Op once I get to campus as well!