079 – American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) Workshop in Kenya

[00:00:00] Santiago: Hi and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I am Santiago Borio, an Impact Activation Fellow, and I’m here with David Stern, one of the founding directors of IDEMS.

Hi, David.

[00:00:17] David: Hi, Santiago. Nice to be chatting. I’m calling from Kenya, of course, so this is exciting.

[00:00:23] Santiago: Yes, and I believe we’re discussing last week’s event, an AIM workshop. The American Institute of Mathematics organised a workshop in Kenya on Open Source Mathematics Curriculum and Assessment Tools. I am sorry that I couldn’t attend for medical reasons, but I wanted to find out more about what happened.

[00:00:50] David: Absolutely. And this week, of course, is the African STACK Conference, which you were also hoping to attend. And so it’s nice for me to fill you in on a few of the details and to use this as an opportunity to tell others as well about what happened.

[00:01:03] Santiago: Yes, of course. And just to frame things in time, the AIM workshop took place from August 5th till August 9th, and of course, the conference is August 12th to 17th, if I’m not mistaken.

[00:01:23] David: Of 2024.

[00:01:26] Santiago: Of course.

[00:01:27] David: And maybe let me just very quickly jump in to some of the really interesting elements about the AIM workshop. This is a model which AIM, the American Institute of Mathematics, has developed over the years, and which has been used for mathematical research but also research into maths education.

And this particular workshop was more on the education side of things.

[00:01:52] Santiago: And I believe it’s the first one that happened in Africa, one of the first ones outside the US.

[00:02:01] David: There have been a few others, as I understand it, outside the US, but most of them are hosted in the AIM centre, where AIM is based. And one of the reasons for that is that they have a very specific way of working, with lots of breakout rooms. And it’s been great to learn about this, this is my first AIM workshop. But it was a really fantastic experience and very enriching. And the model of these workshops is in its own right something which was, I think, very instructive for the participants.

Particularly, there were quite a few East African, there also West African participants and others, but the more local participants from Kenya and so on, hadn’t experienced this sort of workshop before, and for them to get that experience, it was fantastic. And one of the things which I think was so powerful about the approach was, because of the way the breakout rooms happen and they’re very dynamic through the week, many discussions happened that would not have happened in a normal sort of conference or workshop setting.

And so although the focus, the initial focus of the workshop started as undergraduate level, because members of the group had other interests, so many other things were discussed. And there were sort of elements of opportunities which came out of it, which could never have been predicted, so it was a really dynamic event. One of the things that, for me, was really such a privilege, as you know, I’ve spent a long time in Kenya, and I was there for six years, and Maseno University was where I was based, and Maseno University was hosting this workshop.

And one of the things which I was particularly pleased with, is that this brought in people who had never been to Africa before and would never normally have got involved, and, through the AIM workshop, they left with a real interest in collaborating in ways that would never have been conceivable. If the workshop had taken place in the US, it just would never have led to those sorts of outcomes. So the fact that it was hosted in Kenya was just transformative.

[00:04:22] Santiago: Yes, and that’s one reflection that Chris Sangwin, the creator of STACK, had from last year’s conference as well, that it really ignited an interest on what’s happening in at least East Africa, with STACK. And he became a real supporter of our work with African universities. I’m hoping that, or I’m hearing that’s potentially one of the outcomes of the workshop.

[00:04:53] David: Absolutely. And interestingly, of course, Chris now coming in for his second time to Kenya, was one of the more experienced sort of people. He knew a number of the other members because he’d met them the year before. And one of the things that was really powerful was that a number of the American participants who had not been to Africa before, we went to visit, some of us went to visit Maseno University, actually seeing the lecture halls, seeing the environment, understanding it, was very meaningful.

And it really does bring home that some of these collaborations, they could now understand what they were being told, but they couldn’t quite get their heads around. But actually physically being there and seeing it made a big difference. What I’m hoping for some of those collaborations is, they also understood how the challenging environment that the lecturers in Kenya, and not just the lecturers, but the teams in Kenya that they met, are working in. These are also opportunities for them in their research to do research they couldn’t do in other ways because the scale of the classes, some of the big classes are of an order of magnitude that actually lend themselves to some forms of educational research.

And so the challenges the lecturers face are leading to potential learning. And this, to me, was what I’d always dreamt of, because one of the things that I’ve found being in education research communities is that a lot of research happens in high resource environments, and the findings are almost too precise to relate to other contexts.

[00:06:42] Santiago: And of course you discussed this with Lucie recently in an episode, I think it was our last episode on open science, data and research.

[00:06:50] David: Exactly. And now to be seeing this in action. Oh, it’s great.

[00:06:55] Santiago: Yes, because it was very hypothetical, in some sense, before but now you actually were there with people from the US, and I believe a couple of European as well.

[00:07:07] David: Absolutely. There were a couple of European participants. The majority, interestingly, were from somewhere in Africa, and there were a number of different countries represented. And Kenya had a large contingent as the host nation. And it was fascinating to see that one of the big areas which came up, which was mind blowing at the beginning to some of the international participants, was these big lectures that happened with sort of 500, 1000 students, one lecturer, no tutorial assistants or anything, and how the electronic assessment is necessary in that context to be able to give any form of meaningful feedback and so on.

And so in those contexts. There’s a way where the digital interventions are playing a different role.

[00:07:54] Santiago: Yes, and you mentioned the feedback and I want to refer to the interview that you had with Chris Sangwin, there is another episode, I’ll try to link it in the description. But there are real strengths in STACK for that feedback and that formative assessment.

[00:08:13] David: Absolutely. And what was very interesting, and I think very interesting for the American counterparts as well, is that STACK came out very strongly, maybe more strongly than was constructive for the actual workshop, as the front runner of what was being used locally, because a lot of people were now using it who were present. Our aim was not to discuss a single tool, but to discuss electronic tools in general.

But STACK was very well received in the Kenyan context, and it was almost unknown in the American context. And this again was very interesting, because, by and large, one would expect that the American context is at the forefront and aware of the forefront. But in this particular case, there is a tool which has been, for good reason in some sense, overlooked in that context, but really taken up elsewhere. And that was an interesting discussion point.

[00:09:17] Santiago: And we’ve had this conversation many times before of things that work in low resource environments working in high resource environments and the learnings that could be made from the things that work in low resource environments for high resource environments as well.

[00:09:34] David: Yeah. And it is interesting that actually some of the American lecturers were considering trying STACK in their own context on the way back, not because they don’t have resources, there’s wonderful resources, I mean, WebWork was discussed, which is a wonderful system and a great resource. Interestingly, there were participants in Kenya who had used both, and it came out that there were elements of WebWork which hadn’t thought of other environments in that way.

My favourite example of this was that, you know, it had inbuilt into it elements of being able to contact and email your lecturer. Which, of course, when you’ve got a thousand students and only one lecturer, is maybe not the feature you’re most keen on having. Whereas in the American context that would always make sense. And these things, because WebWork hasn’t been confronted to that as much, this then led to discussions about okay, how might these be adapted?

And I think the general discussion was that there are many different tools which are going to be useful, and they are playing different roles, and they all have value. And the other one that came up a lot, Rob Beezer unfortunately wasn’t there, but PreText was mentioned a lot as something where electronic textbooks are being authored in PreText. And now they’re going beyond, they’re looking at actually authoring smaller documents in it as well. So I’m quite excited by how that’s sort of coming along.

[00:10:56] Santiago: And I’m quite excited with the improvements to STACK’s API and hopefully being able to use that to embed questions into PreText.

[00:11:07] David: Absolutely, and let’s just clarify, PreText is a tool to author content so it can be deployed in multiple ways, in multiple formats. And it’s integrated with WebWork, but it hasn’t integrated with STACK because STACK needed a Moodle server to run, whereas, now the API means you could embed individual questions relatively straightforwardly, in theory. And so that’s something which hopefully would be an outcome of the workshop that this is going to be a priority now for PreText.

[00:11:36] Santiago: And I’d like to clarify when you say books can be deployed or content can be deployed in multiple ways, it goes from generating a printable version of a text all the way through to online interactive components.

[00:11:54] David: Absolutely, which would then be published as a webpage, or embedded in some other system. And it’s a really powerful way of thinking about authoring. One of the ways to articulate it is it really separates out the role of the author from the role of the publisher, and that’s a really powerful way of doing this.

[00:12:14] Santiago: And it could lead to different models for publishing content, business models for publishing content.

[00:12:21] David: Absolutely. And there were groups who unfortunately weren’t able to be present at the time, but where the innovations they’re making about those publishing options were appreciated. And the way that these sort of open source tools are really coming together was really exciting.

And so one of the things that I felt came out very nicely was this fact that, actually, having the workshop in Kenya meant that exposure to the Kenya context, suddenly people who were thinking very deeply about things in their context were exposed to a very different context, and they could find and build the links and see how some of the things they were thinking are equally applicable and other things actually challenged their thinking.

One element where I felt this came out very nicely was around these ideas of what sharing actually means, and the idea of actually having ownership at multiple levels. So very often, if you’re just thinking about the American context, let’s say, WebWork, one of its great strengths is it has an embedded question bank, and a huge question bank with lots of really good questions, which are open, and so are being shared.

One of the problems with that question bank is that it is, by definition almost as a single question bank, the questions are relevant in the context within which it was developed, which is primarily the American context. One of the participants made a statement in the event at one point, which suddenly was very powerful for myself and a lot of the other international participants, where she was saying that the reason that STACK in her context was better suited to her than WebWork, was because of the question bank.

Now, that took a bit of unpacking, because STACK itself doesn’t have an open question bank. But in Kenya, we have a team, INNODEMS, who has been building a question bank which is tailored for Kenyan universities in STACK. And actually, what was most powerful in that context was not the power of STACK, and you know the academics amongst us were discussing the various merits between WebWork and STACK, but what was interesting was the strength of WebWork, one of its greatest strengths over STACK, is its open question bank. And yet here we were hearing the opposite.

That the strength of STACK was the question bank. And so what came out of that was this multi layered ownership. This idea that the fact that there was a local question bank is really what was so powerful, that there was a question bank which had been curated relevant to local needs, and which was then being shared openly, but it was tailored to the needs of that community.

And therefore, if we think about the sharing in the open question banks in general, having these open educational resources, the idea of having a single repository, global repository, doesn’t serve the needs of various communities.

[00:16:00] Santiago: But correct me if I’m wrong, the improvements that are being made at Edinburgh University on storing and managing question banks would allow for customisation of such content, wouldn’t it?

[00:16:13] David: This is interesting. Yes, they have taken a big step in that direction. And the big step in that direction that they’ve taken means they’re almost as far as web work was ages ago. The idea of having a GitHub repository of questions, WebWorks had that for years, and it exists, and it’s there, and so on.

What that means is they’ve both advanced to the place where they’re at the starting line. Previously, I think, been the thinking is the idea of a question bank rather than this complex set of question banks with different owners. And that came out very strongly.

And this is, in some sense, for us, this isn’t unusual because we’ve been discussing this complex need for ownership of content, within a shared sort of context, quite a lot. But it was really powerful for it to come out in this context. For example, there is a colleague in Germany where one of their PhD students is at the African conference now, and they are working on open question banks for STACK. Webwork has their open question bank, and they’re thinking about that in different ways, and a lot of people are now able to think about this. You know, we just mentioned these two tools, and there are other tools out there, Numbas, at least, is worth a mention, but there’s many others.

And I think the thing which is so powerful that came out, I believe, of this workshop is this awareness that ownership is needed, that if you come into a different environment, there needs to be this opportunity or this possibility of building something local, which interacts with other question banks in which you can collaborate but which serves a local community.

And this idea that ownership could happen at multiple levels is really important because the sharing of questions across contexts can be different depending on a whole range of factors, including language.

[00:18:17] Santiago: And it reinforces our idea of the need for local STACK professionals. And how we’ve been working towards having a good team of Kenyan STACK professionals who are now doing fantastic work.

But let me slightly change the direction of this conversation, because you’re not the first person that I’m talking about this workshop with post workshop. There was one of the STACK professionals who reached out to me who wasn’t a formal participant, but I believe was engaged in discussions. And, related to our principle of enabling opportunity, this workshop managed to enable opportunity for this individual because she may be able to get a scholarship, but also, coming back to where we started, enabling opportunity for the U. S. participants and others to learn from this challenging context.

Do you have any reflections on that?

[00:19:29] David: Absolutely, and I think it was fantastic for this. You’ve chosen a very specific context, a student getting a scholarship is a fantastic outcome at any context. This isn’t confirmed yet, but there is a good chance that this will actually materialise. And in general, I felt for many of the participants, this particular workshop, there’s a whole master’s program which may exist within six months as an outcome of the workshop, which will enable opportunity for all sorts of other people.

There’s thought about training lecturers and how you actually support lecturers to learn about how to teach. And that became a whole part of the discussion. And one of the observations was that this is happening across the continent and everywhere else. But what’s not happening is it’s not happening specifically for maths lecturers. And yet maths lecturers are fundamentally different in certain ways.

Yeah, this has been really, so many opportunities are coming out and I really like the way you drew out the fact that people who had not worked in, never been to Africa before, what they saw and what they experienced and relationships they built, suddenly they could see the opportunities. And one thing that was so critical is it wasn’t just the opportunities that they could create for others, they saw the opportunities for themselves of how these collaborations could enrich their work and could mean that their work could happen better and faster through interesting collaborations with people who are coming from very different perspectives.

There was one moment where one of the very senior incoming participants who hadn’t spent time in Africa, where he was saying, in my circles, I’m used to knowing about pretty much everything that’s going on. And yet here I am suddenly every day finding out about another big thing that I’ve never heard about. And one of the things that sort of highlighted was the fact that actually, standard communication methods have become very difficult. In these low resource environments, actually communicating what’s happening to the outside world is very difficult.

And so even somebody who’s at the top of their profession hasn’t heard about all these things which are happening, because they’re just not part of the same circles. And it’s very difficult now to get funded to go to conferences and present; these lack of funding opportunities to create interactions have led to an isolation, not just of the participants, let’s say in Kenya, but also of the American counterparts who therefore don’t hear about all these things which are happening.

[00:22:16] Santiago: Which again is something that you touched on with Lucie, and the challenges that many people in low resource environments face with publications.

[00:22:24] David: Absolutely. Yes. And that is the vehicle for communication. And this is where the nature of this workshop, it far exceeded my expectations. I’m so grateful to the organisers, but also to AIM itself, for creating this possibility and actually making it happen. It was, I’m buzzing still, you can see it.

[00:22:47] Santiago: You are indeed. And yes, recognizing AIM is very important, for creating this opportunity, but also the organisers, Joe Champion, Franca Hoffmann, Michael Obiero and Mary Ochieng, I think it’s worth recognizing their huge amount of work and effort for it to happen.

[00:23:07] David: It’s not just the huge amount of work and effort, it’s the insight to actually create the proposal in the first place, the flexibility to then, when it was proposed that it moves from California to Africa, to take that, to seize that, to make that work. They did incredibly. And to then run the whole thing. They did a fantastic job. But the participants were amazing as well.

We should call it a day here, because otherwise I’ll just rant on about this for ages.

[00:23:37] Santiago: Yes, I was getting towards that as well. I think we should call it a day and have another chat next week after the African STACK conference is finished. And maybe reflect on both events together a bit more.

[00:23:50] David: Absolutely. And maybe just to sort of highlight, as the African STACK Conference is just starting and has just started, one of the things was the decision to try and tie these two events together, and this was a deliberate choice, the organisers, Mike Obiero, who you mentioned, was the key organiser of the STACK Conference, and tying the two together was inspired. Because the conference itself has now had a very different role and flavour because of the work that happened last week and so it’s been I’m, I’m buzzing.

[00:24:29] Santiago: On that note, thank you very much David.

[00:24:32] David: Thank you.