The Maths Guide

You may now know that mastery is a choice and primarily about dedicated and focused time spent on a task.

But focused time on the right thing needs a helping hand. We all can use a guide to show us how to best spend our time (Even Tiger Woods has a golf coach).

• Your time is best spent when you are given clear, correct, helpful instruction that allows you to practise your skills and build them gradually. A course builds the jigsaw puzzle of knowledge in a way where everything is linked together gradually to build fluency (what is maths fluency?).
• It is best spent when you are provided with carefully timed revision that ensures you keep all the knowledge you worked so hard for (Revision for retrieval).
• To achieve excellence you must be challenged to a point where you can expect to occasionally fail the first time around. It might sound like this would not be fun. Research on educational gamification however suggests that it is actually this sort of challenge that makes something fun!

And although mastery is about focused time spent on task, the question now is how do you maintain the motivation that is required for you to put in that time and to stay on task. Which brings us back to the topic of gamification mentioned above.

Educational gamification is about providing the student with the psychological reasons to strive to achieve under challenging circumstances (Why challenge?) - Note that we are not talking about games with the word ‘Math’ tagged on. This bribery method has limited value and in many ways is the opposite of what we want to achieve (a deep intrinsic motivation).

There are many aspects to gamification, only some of which can be achieved in an online system. The most important of these are

• Choice to work at your own pace.
• Immediate feedback on progress.
• Competency based rewards which are fair, achievable and valuable.
• Peer based motivation. Your success contributes to your peers’ success.

Math Mastery provides:

• Clear correct instruction that builds fluency in skills, gradually and coherently through varied practise.
• Carefully timed revision to ensure you keep your knowledge and maintain the fluency you need to build skills.
• Challenge. The course is challenging enough for you to be unable to complete some exercises the first time around. I want you to think positively of failure because challenge at a level where you regularly fail the first time around is the key to growth and success.
• Competency based rewards
  • 70% of the prize fund is divided equally between everybody who completes the course.
  • 30% of the prize fund is divided between everybody based on their points. This is done in a fair way that ensures every extra effort you make is rewarded.
• Peer based motivation
  • Anybody that you introduce to The Maths Guide is called your peer. Any points that they get contribute to your score. So you are invested in each others success.