Siyavula’s low-cost online tool empowers high school students to master maths and science
With exam season upon us, school children all over the country are knuckling down with their books – many with the utimate aim of getting good enough grades to apply to university or find a decent job. A solid grasp of maths and science concepts is often what makes the difference. With this in mind, Siyavula – a private company with a mission to make high-quality education accessible in South Africa – has developed an online tool for students to practise their maths and science exercises for only R15 per month.
Siyavula is already a familiar name to many learners, thanks to its widely used curriculum-aligned science and maths textbooks. To date, 10 million copies have been distributed to 25 000 schools around the country. The openly-licensed books can also be accessed free online on even the most basic internet-enabled phone.
But to truly master the skills and concepts they learn in class, students also need to actively engage with the content by practising. Siyavula has developed an interactive learning platform that gives students in Grades 8-12 unlimited exercises to practise their science and maths at a level that is tailored to their ability. An ideal complement to class-based learning, it gives immediate, detailed feedback for each question the student answers.
“We’ve taken the latest cognitive science research about how learners achieve mastery and combined it with powerful technology to create an experience that truly impacts learning maths and sciences,” says Mark Horner, Siyavula’s chief executive officer.
Because of the way Siyavula builds the software, learners can try a variation of the same question, testing the same concept but with different values, different diagrams and a different answer, all at the click of a button.
Each question is automatically generated and each question is different so they can practise as much as they like till they feel confident that they’ve really understood. After submitting an answer, it is marked automatically and immediately, providing targeted and contextual feedback. Besides just seeing if they were right or wrong, learners can also get a detailed step-by-step explanation of how they could have tackled the problem.
Behind the questions is a machine learning engine adapting each practice session to the right level of challenge for that particular learner. It shouldn’t be too difficult otherwise they’ll become frustrated and possibly give up; nor should it be too easy, otherwise they might become bored and lose motivation to improve.
Furthermore, each learner gets their own dashboard: a powerful diagnostic tool that tracks progress, encourages goal setting and helps them to develop their own strategies for improvement.
The service can be used on any internet-enabled device, including feature phones (the precursors to smart phones). “Anybody, anywhere, with any device that can connect to the web can use it,” says Horner.
The service carries a subscription fee of only R15 per month (payable with airtime by sending a premium SMS) or R150 upfront for the whole year. The website has been zero-rated by Vodacom – meaning that the cell phone network’s users aren’t charged for the data they consume whilst using Siyavula’s products – with other such deals in the pipeline.
To use the service, students simply need to sign-up and/or log in at everythingmaths.co.za
