The Xmath Project

The Xmath project is part of the Minerva Action. The Minerva Action's purpose is to increase European cooperation in information and communication technology (ICT) and open and distance learning (ODL) in education. The action seeks to promote understanding of the implications of ICT and the critical and responsible use of ICT for educational purposes among teachers, learners, decision makers, and the public at large.

At European universities and colleges the numbers of students in mathematical courses and passing the exams are dangerously low. To meet this challenge, mathematics teaching needs to undergo an innovative process, making new technology important. This will create more efficient, direct teaching and allow an explorative and personal way of working [9, 10].

Xmath has built a framework making it possible both to use MathML in mathematical education on the internet and to evaluate the pedagogical advantages of net-based education in mathematics. Development and research into MathML's use in e-learning applications has been one of the main purposes of Xmath. Using MathML in Internet Explorer requires special style sheets and plug-ins (e.g., MathPlayer). MathML is a standard supported by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [8]. They have supported the Xmath project as well. webMathematica [6] and Mathematica [11] are important parts of this framework.

A pilot course [1] has been developed to test and demonstrate the main ideas of Xmath. The Xmath project has been completed and reports on the pedagogical aspects of ODL in Xmath [12] and the Xmath project [13] have been written. The Xmath project arranged The First European Workshop on MathML & Scientific e-Contents [14]. The second workshop was arranged by the follow-up project, dMath [15].