In the first years, elementary school teaches the knowledge and skills that are fundamental for further educational and professional careers. This is especially true for mathematics instruction. If concepts are not fully understood, this can lead to major problems in the following school years as well as in further life. Yet, there are few contemporary options for training these basic math skills.
MatheX is an app for App iOS and Android, with which the basic mathematical skills can be optimally trained.
The training is based on speech input and speech synthesis. The smartphone reads out the task and the student only has to say the result. This is recognized and checked. This is followed by an evaluation, also voice-based, with correction of the incorrect answer if necessary.
The interaction is thus completely natural and intuitive. Direct feedback also maximizes the training effect, as the student is immediately corrected if he makes a mistake and can thus adapt and improve his answers in the future. The training modules cover all the basic mathematical skills and are based on the scientifically proven arithmetic tests, from which the number ranges to be tested were also derived.
The use of new and innovative technologies thus enables the most effective and appealing training possible. Of absolutely crucial importance here is the fact that every student has his or her own specific strengths and weaknesses, and it is essential to take these into account when selecting the focus of the exercises.
Lack of individualization is one of the biggest drawbacks and criticisms of the current educational system. However, personalization of subject areas and types of tasks is crucial especially in the learning of basic mathematical skills, and the lack of it can be the cause of major problems of elementary school students in this area, which, as described above, can have a very negative impact on their future.
Therefore, complete individualization of learning content is one of the fundamental features of MatheX. But how can this be achieved? In order to provide an outstanding user experience and maximize training success, automatic customization of task types and their difficulty level is necessary. At best, the student, their parents or teachers should never have to think about the training and yet the learning effect should be maximized.
MatheX calculates the student's performance level, as well as individual strengths and weaknesses, based on the results of past training sessions and adjusts the training accordingly. This not only significantly increases the efficiency of the training, but also makes it much easier to use, which is especially important for the app's relatively young target group, who may have little experience with using smartphones.
MatheX also allows users to practice and train math completely independently from home, which has become more important and in demand than ever, especially nowadays, in times of the Corona pandemic.
All in all, MatheX offers a simple, motivating, fully individualized and optimally efficient new way to practice basic math skills in the best possible way.
In addition, there is a teacher app with which the teacher can view the learning progress of his students and even assign homework. This means that the teacher no longer has to collect and laboriously check the homework of his students and still receives a more detailed and comprehensive overview of the performance level of his students than would have been possible before. In meaningful overviews, the teacher can see which students he should support again and where, and where the strengths and weaknesses of his class lie, in order to be able to teach them even better.
Thus, MatheX is the ideal way for both private users and educational institutions to practice basic mathematical skills.
However, MatheX is no longer just an idea, a concept or a prototype. In over 350 hours of development work, I have already fully developed and published the app. It is available on both iOS and Android in the Apple App and Google Play Store respectively and already has over 2500 downloads there as well as numerous positive reviews.
MatheX was finalist at Bestform 2021 and Startup Cup 2021 and was named "App of the Week" by Lerninstitut.at. Last but not least, the project was also awarded the national prize at the national competition Jugend gründet out of a total of over 3,700 participants.
