The mathematical skills of Swedish compulsory school and upper secondary school students are declining. To remedy this, Maths Coach Online was introduced. It is available to students who have questions about mathematics or need help with specific math problems.
The coaches are subject teacher students at Linköping University, the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and Chalmers University of Technology, and the service is a collaboration between these universities. The teaching students have studied mathematics, mathematics didactics or pedagogy and are trained in online teaching and the technical platforms.“This service develops the didactic abilities and subject competence of our future teachers. The coaches become good at digital teaching, something that’s missing in most teacher training programmes today,” says Daniel Carlsson, the manager of Maths Coach Online in Linköping.
Maths Coach Online is now available also in Scotland and the Czech Republic
The service started at KTH in 2009 and Linköping University joined in 2011. Now the University of Edinburgh is also a partner and has started up the service for students in Scotland. In mid-October 2024, the service was launched in the Czech Republic.
“We are pleased that the concept is spreading, and we welcome a new node for this service. The international services are independent nodes that we see as parallel operations. We share our experience and provide the system.”
Basis for research
Maths Coach Online is also a basis for research on how online teaching aimed at primary and secondary school students can best be carried out.
“The purpose of this research is to develop good platforms for digital learning and understand how we as teachers should act.”
Published in LiU Magazine #3 2024.