Virtual Math Teams

Virtual Math Teams (VMT) was a research project directed by Gerry Stahl from 2003-2014 at the Math Forum at Drexel University in Philadelphia. A group of PhD students, Math Forum staff, interdisciplinary faculty, visiting researchers and international colleagues collaborated on the project.

The VMT Project was a paradigmatic example of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). It developed an online service for math students to meet in small groups online to discuss challenging mathematical topics. It studied the usage of the technological environment designed for this service, using a method of chat interaction analysis that it refined. The project was guided by theories of collaborative learning, community knowledge building and group cognition, that it explored and developed. It is an example of postcognitivist theory and practice.

Much of the VMT research takes place in weekly “data sessions”, as pictured here.

A popular report on the beginnings of the VMT Project provides a good introduction: download it here.

The VMT online environment consists of a Lobby and many chat rooms for the collaborative discussion of math. In the Lobby, students can define their profiles and browse the profiles of other students. They can send messages to other people. Mainly, teachers and students can see what chat rooms are already defined.

The VMT environment was originally based on ConcertChat, a collaboration infrastructure developed in Germany. At first it was extended for VMT by the original creators, then by Math Forum staff. It has subsequently been rewritten. ConcertChat and VMT are available as Open Source.

After a 2-year NSDL and a 6-year IERI grant from the US NSF ended, the VMT project collaborated with researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University through an NSF ALT grant to explore the use of software agents in the VMT environment; a list of publications related to the ALT grant is available here. An ONR CKI grant also supported continuing data analysis.

During this period, the VMT Project integrated the Open Source dynamic math system, GeoGebra, into the VMT system. This created the first public multi-user version of a dynamic mathematics environment. VMT is still the only truly multi-user version of the internationally popular GeoGebra system for dynamic geometry and other dynamic math domains.

In September 2011, a 5-year NSF DR K-12 grant extended major work on VMT. This grant supported the implementation of a more robust version of VMT-with-GeoGebra, with Math Forum technical support mainly by Tony Mantoan. Through weekly project meetings, the research team tried out different curricular approaches and developed a series of activities and tutorials for VMT-with-GeoGebra during 2011-2014—see Adventures in Dynamic Geometry.

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