Fifteen years of teaching across four countries, and a platform built because a PDF with a login is not a course.

Teaching

The platform

learn.mabroklab.com is where the courses live. It was built for these courses rather than bought, because the things that make a difference to a student are the things a general-purpose system does not do:

• Worked examples that stay closed until you have tried the problem. Reading a solution is not the same as solving one.
• Practice that explains. Every question comes back with the reasoning, and answers are checked on the server, so the key is not sitting in the page.
• A tutor with context. It knows which topic you are on and what you have been getting wrong, so you are not explaining yourself from scratch each time. On a problem that counts it gives the next step, not the answer.
• Write with a pen. Work on screen with a stylus, zoom in like paper, and hand in a written answer to be read and marked.
• A verified problem bank. Every answer that drives marking has been re-derived with a computer algebra system before a student meets it.
• A profile that follows you — what is mastered, what needs review, and when, with spaced repetition bringing back what you are about to forget.

Students reach their course with a join code from their instructor.

Courses

• MATH 101 — Calculus I
• MATH 102 — Calculus II
• MATH 213 — Differential Equations
• MATH 217 — Mathematics for Engineering
• MATH 220 — Foundations of Mathematics
• MATH 231 — Linear Algebra
• MATH 285 — Mathematics for Electrical Engineering

Also taught over the years: Calculus III, Real Analysis, PDEs, Numerical Analysis, Applied Mathematics, Physics and MATLAB programming.

Approach

Student evaluations have averaged 4.7 out of 5 over eight years, across four countries. The method behind that is not complicated: show where a result comes from, when it applies, and what it looks like when it goes wrong — then give people something to do with it.