Learning Tools

Math Computing Program Offered in Online Edition for Education

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 01/26/21

A company that produces software for math computing has developed an online environment for teaching and learning math. Maplesoft's new Maple Learn allows for high school- and college-age students to solve math problems. The company said that its new release, which is an online version of Maple, its flagship program, has already been used by 5,000 people during a public beta.

Educators can use Maple Learn to combine the steps for a problem worked out by hand with computations performed by the software, helping them to focus their instructional time on those parts of the problem where it's most needed. The program also allows the instructor or teacher to set up interactive exploration of math expressions to enable the learner to see the impact of changing parameters. And they can share the work with their students and provide homework assignments. Problems and solutions can include graphs, computations and explanations.

When students need help, they can check individual steps to see where they've gone wrong or share their work with others online.

According to the company, the new release enables students to transition to Maple itself "if and when their needs grow." Both products work with Maple Calculator App, a free app that allows students to graph and solve problems on their phones, but also move those problems into Maple or Maple Learn for further work.

"Educators told us that, while Maple is a great tool for doing, teaching, and learning all sorts of math, some of their students found its very power and breadth overwhelming, especially in the early years of their studies. As a result, we created Maple Learn to be a variation of Maple that is exclusively focused on the needs of educators and students teaching and learning math in high school, two year and community college, and the first two years of university,", said Karishma Punwani, director of academic product management, in a press release. "Of course, in the face of the pandemic and the vast increase of remoting learning, an online environment is more important than ever, and we hope that students and teachers dealing with remote learning this year will find that Maple Learn makes their lives just a little bit easier."

The company offers a free version of Maple Learn, which allows for access to all functionality with limits on daily use. A "premium" subscription with unlimited access is $6.99 per month. Instructors may request a free premium account.