"Why Learn It (WLI) aims to address the issue of motivation around learning math by helping students
explore the beauty and relevance of what they would otherwise dismiss as inconsequential in school.
Targeting late middle-school and early high-school students, WLI takes a hybrid approach to cultivat-
ing motivation. It leverages the engagement value of short (approximately three-minute long) videos
depicting real people talking about how math and computational thinking are critical to their successes
in a number of professional areas. Students then complete a series of interactive exercises that help
students explore an application area discussed in the video in more detail. These exercises, however,
are not simply drill problems aimed at making students experts in a particular content area. Instead,
they are multi-step assignments that require the students to draw upon both detailed mathematical
knowledge and a big picture view of how this knowledge can be used to draw useful, meaningful
conclusions. The exercises are focused on bridging the worlds of number, images, and sounds in or-
der to help students build intuition around a particular topic. Therefore, while some questions have
objectively correct responses, others require students to gather knowledge they have built through
answering previous questions within the packet to draw new inferences. Hints are provided along the
1
way to ensure students receive assistance when necessary. Finally, WLI is housed online and is oered
for free, signifying minimal barriers to usage by educators and students."
The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) has disclosed the official notification regarding the CAT 2013 result.
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Abstract: "Middle school students lack efficient problem solving skills due to several factors. The writing
process has been linked to the development of students' problem solving skills. The present study
investigated the impact of the writing process on the mathema
tical problem solving skills for middle
grades students. N = 96 students participated in a six weeks, after school STEM program, and they
were randomly assigned into two groups: one focused on the writing process with mathematical
problem solving and the o
ther on homework/high stakes test preparation with mathematical
problem solving. In this quantitative study, the results provide evidence that the students from the
writing process group were more likely to generate and apply better problem solving skills
as
compared to the control group. This study further contributes to the support and importance of
integrating different subjects across the generalized learning realm"