The Project "math-kit"

The aim of this project is the development of a multimedia construction kit math-kit to support mathematics education in both service and in the foundation course of mathematics. Additionally, a close interconnection of mathematics teaching with the teaching of information technology and the engineering sciences should be accomplished through the implementation of multimedia elements. This has been missing from near to all curricula. The single elements of the construction kit can be used not only by professors (teachers) but also by students independent of courses of study and support classical as well distance and self-education. The elements of math-kit can be divided into three categories: Furthermore, an organisational and technical framework, which guarantees the smooth implementation and further development of math-kit is created. For the evaluation, math-kit will be prototypically be integrated into the courses of study:
  • Mathematics for Mechanical Engineers
  • Mathematics for Computer Scientists
  • Technical Computer Science
And in the distance education courses of
  • Linear Algebra
Apart from this, math-kit is planned to be incorporated in the virtual University of Bayern (Bavaria). Contrary to present integrated solutions, math-kitoffers the important advantages of:
  • the good transferability and serviceability (high flexibility)
  • the support of specific learning interests (individual learning)

Besides the generation of content, math-kit focusses on the development of an architecture for a generic e-learing system with embedded authoring facilities. Based on the metaphor of a construction kit, this approach offers a general solution for specific content creation and publication. The learning resources are encoded as IMS Content Packages with a special structure to separate content and presentation. These packages are called Template Content Objects (TCO) which contain a XML-template and additional files for multimedia learning objects. They ressemble SCORM Sharable Content Objects (SCO) and can be simply translated to them as well as combined to Content Aggregation Packages. These aggregated packages represent higher structures like lessons, chapters or complete courses. The developed authoring system consists of different authoring tools that handle TCOs. Every task in the process of learing object creation is done by experts which are modeled with the help of roles.

The aim of the math-kit project is a generic web based e-learining system that provides lecturers and students with multimedia support and which will be demonstrated for the generation of courses in undergraduate mathematics.


Project time: 03.2001 - 12.2003