Galway (IE), June 2010 - ALISON, an Irish-based provider of free online courses, has announced the release of a suite of new maths courses that allow the learner to grapple with the subject matter in an interactive and self-paced manner. The programs give students the confidence and skills to succeed at both higher and ordinary-level maths.
The high incidence of failure rates even at the ordinaries math level in Ireland suggests that rather than lacking the incentive to study at higher level, a large proportion of students instead lack the basic fundamentals and struggle with the subject. These worrying figures are indicative of students' inability to deal with maths in an interactive and thought-provoking manner.
In spite of the country's ambitions to be considered a "smart economy", and despite embracing technology in all other areas of modern-day life, technology for the most part is absent in the classroom. Instead of embracing ubiquitous technologies, educators and educational institutions continue to cling to traditional, staid teaching methods that do little for students and manifest in poor grades and high failure rates.
Interactive pedagogical technology is beginning to provide an alternative to traditional teaching methods, capturing learner's attention and allowing interaction with the subject matter on a different level.
Irish-based course provider ALISON offers a solution by harnessing the technology available and providing free interactive courses. A smorgasbord of maths courses are currently being added to their growing list of free interactive school curriculum courses, which educate the learner from basic fractions to more complex matters such as probability and geometry.
