The International Baccalaureate (IB) program is a global educational curriculum for international and internationally-minded students. It’s comprised of four educational programmes that serve students anywhere in the world and allows them to move freely between countries without disrupting their education.
Eduten is an adaptable tool that can be used confidently in International Baccalaureate schools too. For example, Eduten directly supports IB learning strategies and develops student skills with regard to the four IB mathematics assessment criteria of the Middle Years Program (MYP).
Below, we list the IB MYP mathematics assessment criteria and explain how Eduten fully supports each one.
Criterion A: Knowing and Understanding
Students select and apply mathematics to solve problems in both familiar and unfamiliar situations in a variety of contexts, demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the framework’s branches (number, algebra, geometry and trigonometry, statistics and probability).
Eduten’s exercise library includes tasks and problems for all topics present in national and international curricula around the world. Students have access to numerous exercises containing hundreds of questions for each weekly mathematics topic.
Eduten’s exercises have been built to help students develop their theoretical understanding from instructive material to holistic and practical skills. Via more than 150 different exercise types, students can approach the topic at hand using an array of different strategies.
Additionally, Eduten includes revision exercises for the most important skills (eg. multiplication) spread over many weeks to build a long-term, deep understanding of these topics that are important stepping stones for subsequent topics and concepts.
Criterion B: Investigating Patterns
Learning from one’s mistakes is an extremely important mechanism for learning and studying motivation. Eduten’s motivational model includes several strategies that help students build a mindset that encourages always trying to give an answer, and risk-taking. Eduten achieves this by emphasizing positive, instant feedback with motivational factors that encourage students to try and try again if the answer is wrong. Each topic in Eduten is covered through a plethora of different kinds of exercises ranging from simple memorization to an array of investigative problem-solving tasks.
Criterion C: Communicating
Students use appropriate mathematical language and different forms of representation when communicating mathematical ideas, reasoning and findings, both orally and in writing.
Eduten’s exercises allow students to familiarize themselves with standard mathematical notation in a practical way via hundreds of on-topic tasks every week. Over time, this helps students build an intuitive grasp of notation, removing the mental struggle of needing to try and decipher the intent of a problem. This makes it easy to formulate mathematical forms themselves. Customizing the notation to local and national requirements is easy to do with Eduten.
Although Eduten is a digital learning tool, we encourage teachers to integrate non-digital learning modalities, eg. pen and paper, reward charts and group work where pedagogically relevant.
Criterion D: Applying Mathematics in Real-Life Contexts
Students transfer theoretical mathematical knowledge into real-world situations and apply appropriate problem-solving strategies, draw valid conclusions and reflect upon their results.
Eduten includes hundreds of exercises for each mathematical concept implemented through a wide variety of exercise types. These include, for example, word problems to help students practice mapping and solving real-life problems. Eduten’s instant feedback system guides the students toward correct reasoning strategies as well as checking their work independently.
Everything we develop at Eduten is backed by a team of researchers at the University of Turku Finland. It’s our mission to create positive learning experiences for teachers and students around the world. The IB is largely based on applying skills in real-life contexts and Eduten is a powerful tool with which to develop those skills.
For more detailed information about Eduten’s alignment with the IB framework, please see Eduten’s Pedagogical Content Description.
Episode #12 of Eduten’s Finnish Education Perspectives Podcast features an interesting discussion with the Director General of the International Baccalaureate, Dr. Olli-Pekka Heinonen. Tune in to this popular episode here.
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