Po Shen Loh livestreams, hires excellent high school students to teach math, and teams up with comedians to make classes more interesting.
Po Shen Loh, 42, is a professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University and has been responsible for coaching the US International Math Olympiad team for the past 10 years. He recently created an online learning platform live.poshenloh for students aged 9-13, which has attracted attention.
Loh will recruit outstanding high school students from across the United States to teach alongside professional comedians.
At the beginning of the class, Loh lectures, and the teaching assistants solve practical exercises. The actors follow the lesson, giving immediate feedback to the teacher. This makes the class more energetic and interesting. The students interact with the teacher in the comments section.
Professor Po Shen Loh. Photo: May Tse
Professor Po Shen Loh came up with this idea when he saw that during the Covid-19 pandemic, online learning became popular but did not attract students.
“Most people find Zoom classes boring. I started thinking about why it’s so hard to engage students with these classes, while TikTok and Twitch are so successful,” he said.
When artificial intelligence like ChatGPT can solve homework easily, he believes that teaching Math is no longer simply about guiding students to do exercises but helping them figure out how to solve unfamiliar problems. When teaching, he often asks "Okay, what next?", so that students have to consider and discuss with their friends to find the solution.
Loh believes that today's students need to learn collaborative problem solving, creativity and communication. The key to this is engaging them with mathematics.
Professor Poh’s classes have received positive feedback. One student said he “awakened his algebra skills” after taking them. About 2,000 students have participated in the past two years, with nearly 200 high school students serving as Poh’s teaching assistants. The hourly fee is $20.
Professor Poh wishes this idea had come to him sooner.
“I didn't think math and art could go together so well,” he said.
Doan Hung (According to CNN, SCMP )
Source link
Comment (0)