139 – Scaling the Maths Camps

[00:00:06] David: Hi, and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I’m David Stern, a founding director of IDEMS, and it’s my pleasure to be here today with Zach Mbasu, a long term collaborator. And you’re not new to this podcast, this isn’t your first episode with us, but it’s great to have you again, Zach. 

[00:00:26] Zach: Thank you, David. As you mentioned, I’m the director of INNODEMS, that is based in Kenya. I’m very much excited to be here again.

[00:00:36] David: Yes, and I’m really excited by this discussion because you’ve been doing a lot of work recently in different areas, and I haven’t caught up on all of it as much as I’d like, so I’m using this as an excuse to hear about some of the work that’s been going on recently, specifically, should we start with math camps?

[00:00:57] Zach: Yes great. A lot has happened, specifically with math camps, we’ve been doing these camps since 2010, first started in Kenya and… 

[00:01:05] David: I believe our listeners may be familiar with this because that was, I believe, one of our first episodes, when we discussed the maths camps and the history of them together. I’m so excited to hear about some of the recent developments where you’ve done maths camps with thousands of students and you’ve been doing camps with all sorts of interesting initiatives. Get us up to speed, what’s been happening?

[00:01:32] Zach: Yes, so we’ve done so many math camps in Kenya with different organisations, with school libraries, with schools, with just girls, with a mixture of boys and girls. And also these camps have been happening beyond Kenya, in Ethiopia, in Ghana, and many other African countries. 

So, globally, and even worse locally, students do not like math generally and they complain about math and it is always seen as a subject that is full of, you know, theories and formulas and tedious calculations, and kids don’t really like it. But the idea of the math camps is to be able to inspire students, to be able to turn these around, so that we can change the way students see math and shift their attitudes towards this exciting subject that can, you know, open a world of possibilities for these kids. 

[00:02:39] David: I’d just like to sort of highlight this because you’re right, this is part of the history which is needed but it’s really important. Many maths camps in Europe, in the U. S., elsewhere, are targeting students who are already good at maths and love maths, and they’re enabling them to go further. But what you’re describing is rather different from that.

Yes, kids who like math s do well and do come to maths camps, but the maths camps are targeting a wider audience, even kids who don’t like maths. And we have some interesting stories of parents who have sent reluctant kids to maths camps, who then went on to do mathematical science degrees. You might want to give one or two case studies or just, examples you know of this.

[00:03:28] Zach: Yeah, you’re right, the math camps are very inclusive. We don’t just target like the high achieving students. We also consider students who are very poor. We also target students who consider themselves as having poor math skills. We target, you know, both genders, we know that, especially in Kenya, there is this perception that math is done well by boys and girls cannot do better in math, but we welcome both boys and girls so that everyone can feel supported and empowered to explore the world of mathematics. 

So we intentionally bring together students from ages of Form 2, about twelve, thirteen, fourteen, up to eighteen, from different backgrounds, different schools and different achievement levels. And we have examples of students who were doing very poorly, they were getting grade Es and that never thought about doing very well in math. And when they did come for the math camps, over a period of two, three years, they changed their perception about math and they ended up doing courses in math. 

A good example is, one of our current employees, she came when she was in Form 2 and she was not doing very well in math. And then when she experienced the math camp, she got very excited and inspired, and she went back to her school and shared this with her teachers and fellow students. She started a math club at the school, and we started supporting math clubs, and she ended up doing a course in statistics and economics. And now she is one of our employees who’s supporting app development and also analysis of the data that is coming from that app. 

Again, we have another example of, a student who was also not doing very well in math and then he came and participated in the camp. That camp was in Maseno around 2013. And then he got so inspired and ended up doing a course in statistics, and later on he came to support us in some of the work with schools and working with data. And now he’s working as a data consultant, consulting for, various, companies. 

So this just shows the power of not excluding, or just considering high achieving students, but just considering that everyone has the potential to be able to do math and explore math, and grow with their own channel of exploring their careers in math. 

[00:06:12] David: The thing which is going through my mind as you discuss this is that our experience in this over the years, when we started out, we didn’t expect a one week intervention with students to actually change anything with them. We were building this as something which was multifaceted, it was about capacity building the facilitators as well as supporting students. 

But we were anticipating that one week would not be enough. But some of the case studies we have, one week can make a difference in the context where you’re working. That that one week then gets followed up with a change in attitude and change in motivation, which can lead to a change in outcomes. And that really surprised us.

[00:07:01] Zach: Yes. So if you think about it actually in just one week staying with a student and helping them like, is not really enough to be able to change a student’s perception of math and the way they perform in math. However, this has been very surprising because with the camps it’s very different from the traditional classroom because of you know, the activities and exiting mathematical concepts that the participants are introduced to, because they are not activities that you would find in your regular classroom. 

So they open the students eyes and spark curiosity, and they inspired these tasks for deeper, you know, learning and interest in math. So we introduce to them things like, you know, code breaking, for example, which is not something that is taught in schools. We introduce things like game theory. We introduce them to programming with and without computers. And these are really fascinating areas that they might not otherwise encounter in their classroom. 

So when we show them these, they now start to think that, ok, math is actually beyond just what is taught in classroom. And then they start to explore more, they get excited, they change this attitude towards the subject. And it’s a collection of all these, plus the interaction with the people and also when they go back, they start interacting with the right people, they start asking, you know, like the right questions to their teachers. 

And I guess this is what really supports them to really start changing, you know, beyond just the one week that we are with them. 

[00:08:50] David: Yes, but it’s been consistent enough now in different contexts that we have observed this. So it is happening, whether we understand it or not, but one week is enough to change that mindset.  

[00:09:03] Zach: Just to mention one thing. So, during the camps, we asked the students to do, reflections, you know, every day we have sessions, at the end of the day, we ask them to do reflections on the sessions, on the activities, and they make comments about the puzzles, about the sessions that they’ve gone through. 

And some of them say things like, oh, you know, like this session or this puzzle or this activity or this physical game has made me to like math, and some of them give feedback on how this gives them hope, knowing that math is actually beyond just formulas, and these are statements that show us that, you know, the camp really ignites the passion for the subject that might have been dormant or they have might been discouraged before they come for the math camp. 

[00:09:54] David: So can we dig into some of your more recent experiences that I’ve not heard so much about? I know last year you went to this school with about a thousand children and you did a maths camp somehow using the virtual maths camp resources with a thousand kids at once. Do you want to tell me a bit about that?

[00:10:16] Zach: Ah, yes. So we’ve had different schools. One has been a school with about 800 students on almost the border of Kenya and Tanzania in Oloitokittok. It’s a purely girl school. And with this school, the principal reached out and said, my girls are not doing very well in math. I would like your help to come and inspire, you know, our girls, to at least change the way they look at this subject. 

And the most recent one has been a collection of schools in Nyanza, which is in Western Kenya, and when these principals of several schools heard about the event, the math camp that we did in Oloitokitok, they said that they would like to select a few students from each school and collect them in one school and we run a math camp for them.

So just recently, last month we had this camp with a collection of five schools. Again, it was purely girl schools. We brought together about five hundred girls and then we engaged them in a week of these math camp activities. And in both scenarios we got the students and the teachers of these schools to come together with a shared vision of having a passion for math and creating that supportive environment and collaborative environment where anyone can learn. 

And as you can imagine, having 600 students in one place is very challenging and one of the resources we took advantage of was this pack of cards. We have this pack of cards, where we have activities on each card. It’s a pack of cards that has got fifty two cards and each card has got a specific activity. And we have the physical cards so we would group them in small groups and we had a team of about 21 volunteers in both scenarios.

And then we will go through the activities together with these kids and support them to solve the problems and activities and encourage them to share amongst one another. So bringing these students together, created a very rich experience for both the learners and also the teachers to just, you know, connect, do the activities, collaborate and learn from each other.

[00:12:44] David: This scale is very exciting because I remember, when we first started, we were considering those numbers, and we then did a maths camp with just over 100 students, and we then decided that actually to rein it back in and rein in the ambition. And so the fact that you’re now taking on these larger numbers, this is so exciting.

Can I just check, in these contexts, my understanding is that a big part of what’s changed and why you’re able to do these large numbers now, is that, you are actually doing this alongside capacity building the teachers to be part of the facilitation of this process. Is that correct?

[00:13:27] Zach: You’re very right. Of course, with those numbers, like just having a few people, it would be very difficult to really support learners at an individual level as they do the activities. But the first time we did the camp, we started with, you know a camp of 50, 60 kids and with about 10, 20 volunteers, the ratio’s about right in terms of that individual support.

And the second year, we scaled to about 200 students, and that was indeed challenging because of the numbers. And the recent activities with these two cases, the school in Oloitokittok and the group of schools in Nyanza, where we had, like, you know, hundreds of students. So what we did was first we did the preparations with their teachers. 

So that meant that in addition to the volunteers we had, we also increased the capacity to facilitate by empowering these teachers from these schools who were very excited to experience new set of activities that they can also use, with their students. So we take time to build their capacity to run the camp activities that are based on the activities that we have developed. 

And then during the actual week, we have our volunteers who are co -leading and co -facilitating sessions with the teachers from these particular schools. So at any one particular session with a small set of students, two facilitators, like a volunteer from our organisation and a teacher from a respective school would join hands to run a small group activity with about 30 students, 20 students or sometimes 40 students, depending on the numbers. And that is what really made this scaling of running math camps with many students, to be very successful. 

And then also as we worked with the students, you will find that as you work with the students, they are also these students who are like very excited and they want to share with the others. So we also take advantage of those students, and also allow them to be able to be the ones who are also sharing these activities and co -leading activities as we work together with these students. 

And then the other thing that has, also made it, very successful with those numbers is that we also integrate, you know, technologies that allow students to, you know, to visualise some of the activities and concepts, and experiment and also gain a hands on experience. So that allows to be able to do activities with many students. 

And then lastly, the other thing that we do, we have parallel sessions. So we would divide the big group so we will run different sessions for different students, and then we swap them over so that every student experiences all of the sessions that we do have. 

[00:16:33] David: Sorry, can I just check this last one? So you’re actually repeating sessions so the same facilitators would repeat the same session multiple times to different groups.

[00:16:45] Zach: Oh, yes, that’s right.

[00:16:48] David: And this is, as you scale, this is obviously needed. Yeah, this is exactly the sort of tools of scale which you’re using, great. 

Now, you mentioned the virtual mass camp cards, and I guess this is really the bit that I want to finish with. I’ll just give a bit of a background to this. During COVID, the maths camps had to stop because all over the place where these maths camps were happening you weren’t allowed to gather. You couldn’t meet. 

This is when there was a big international effort to build this tool which we call the virtual maths camp, which is this deck of cards with digital resources associated to it based on, at that point it was around 10 years of maths camp experience. And this is what you are now using in these camps to scale this. Is that correct?

[00:17:39] Zach: That’s correct. So during COVID, as you mentioned, we put together a deck of cards, 54 cards, and every single card has got a unique activity that has got engaging activities, puzzles, or a fun mathematical fact for anyone to engage with. So the way the card is designed is to enable a large variety of math camp kind of activities to take place.

And when you have like in person activities like the ones we had, then it becomes very easy to just pick activities from those cards and then be able to run those activities. Each of those cards has got enough information for participants to really get engaged into the activity on the card and then it is also linked to like further information, you know, beyond the card. 

So the kids as well as the facilitators will just get stuck into an activity. And the role of the facilitator will be just supporting the learners, asking them the right questions, getting them to, you know, argue for their points and counter-argue the points of other students. 

And this is what has really made, you know, like this scaling to many students possible because these packs of cards can just be distributed to groups of students. And then you would focus these groups of students to a particular activity and then they just get stuck in and they do the activity. 

[00:19:13] David: Absolutely. And I think the thing which is really exciting and what I’m hearing about how these are getting used now is really the engagement of the teachers in that process. And so your training of the teachers broadly if I understand you correctly, training of the teachers is now really to help them understand how to facilitate the activities on the cards, which again, limits this to a sort of, a finite set of things which the teachers can then get comfortable with.

[00:19:42] Zach: yes. I’ll give you an example of the school in Oloitokitok. So after we did the camp, of course, we’ve been in touch with the teacher that they have been reporting on what they have been doing. So initially they had a math club, which had a small set of students who are doing well in math, and they just focused on this group of students. 

But when we did the camp at the school and we left them with this pack of cards, what they are now doing is that they are putting out an activity of the week, or a puzzle of the week every Monday on assembly, and then they, you know, they display it on the notice board, they display it in their classroom as an activity to be done, in the week, by all the students in the school. 

And this has been continuing. And because, the pack of cards has got 52 cards and, you know, the year has got 52 weeks, it means that they have enough activities to go beyond the year, given that the school is not in session like all the time of the year.

So they have found it very useful. But as they give out the activities they continue to facilitate the engagement when students come back with, you know, solutions, they try to probe them further, they get them to explain. And the idea is not like really to get the correct answer but the process of just working through and thinking and, you know, discussing and creating that culture about solving problems within the school. And that has been really much appreciated by the teachers at the school.

[00:21:20] David: This is great to hear about how they’re able to continue using this. The thing that I’m slightly worried about is you’re going to come back to us soon and say we need the second deck of cards to come out fairly soon because they want to have the second year’s worth. But we’ll get to that another time. 

And I think, actually, that’s another discussion which I think we should have, and maybe we should have a follow up episode soon because that maybe relates to the textbook work you’re doing. so we could discuss that maybe next.

[00:21:50] Zach: Definitely. Yes.

[00:21:52] David: Great. Thank you so much, Zach. It’s been an absolute pleasure discussing with you, as always.

[00:21:57] Zach: Thank you, David.