The Math Forum @ Drexel is an example of how one idea, generated in response to a social and academic need, can be germinated through public investment, cultivated by the commitment of a professional and volunteer community, hosted at a major university and nurtured into bloom by the tenacity of entrepreneurial educators dedicated to improving mathematics education.

In an era of national need for improved mathematics education, The Math Forum represents a new kind of enterprise that blends the best of traditional academia (innovative, principled, research-based) with contemporary entrepreneurial values and practices (market-oriented, cost-efficient, client-sensitive). The staff of The Math Forum comprises researchers, teachers and information technology professionals with decades of experience. They regularly seek and are sought by other professional researchers and teachers to explore the frontiers of learning from the perspectives of many disciplines, including mathematics, sociology, anthropology, technology and education. The result, over more than a decade of collaboration and community building, has been the invention and re-invention of The Math Forum's approach to online mathematics education.

The Math Forum story began in 1992, when the National Science Foundation funded the Geometry Forum at Swarthmore College as an experiment in using the new technologies of the Internet to expand student learning and teacher professional development. By 2000, a set of innovative, interactive educational services had created a community knowledge-building environment that attracted the attention of WebCT. At the same time, The Math Forum was seeking a partner whose business model could sustain its mentoring programs. As a result, WebCT bought The Math Forum and began to build out substantive academic communities in many disciplines, complementing the courses being taught with the WebCT course tool.

Drexel President Constantine Papadakis, through discussions with WebCT, realized early on that The Math Forum was a powerful engine to bring online learning, mentoring and assessment to high school teachers and students; a platform to stimulate research collaborations; a brand to excite Drexel's student applicant population; and a set of innovative services that could expand the educational program of an entrepreneurial university. As a result, when the dotcom bubble burst and WebCT refocused on its core product, President Papadakis negotiated with WebCT to take over The Math Forum with its 35 employees and relocate it to Drexel's West Philadelphia campus as a subsidiary of the University, under the supervision of the director of the School of Education . In 2002, The Math Forum became The Math Forum @ Drexel (www.mathforum.org).

The Math Forum site is among the most popular math destinations on the Web, receiving an average of two million visits per month (Chart 1). Visitors and subscribers to the site find searchable archives of more than one million pages of math content, teaching materials and other resources stemming from interactions among students, teachers, mathematicians, concerned parents and teacher educators. From the perspective of these visitors, The Math Forum can be evaluated in terms of usability and reliability, but other perspectives are also helpful in understanding The Math Forum as an enterprise.

Strategically, The Math Forum was at the forefront of using the interactive possibilities of the Internet to build community. Focusing on users first, The Math Forum developed opportunities for teachers, mathematicians, researchers, students and parents to work together online through programs such as the mentored Problems of the Week, Ask Dr. Math and Teacher2Teacher. These interactions become resources that can be enhanced and published for use and reuse by the larger community. Quickly the community develops a large amount of user-driven material that experts and the community vetting process turn into quality resources. In turn, these can feed back into traditional dissemination and business models, such as the Ask Dr. Math books published by John Wiley & Sons.

Educationally, The Math Forum combines writing and reflective practices with computer technology to engage students in nonroutine mathematical problem solving that raises their learning to a higher level. But that is only the beginning. As students learn, The Math Forum is able to engage teachers in reflection on the mathematics and the mathematical thinking of the students, and to support teachers as they build content knowledge, learn new teaching approaches and become researchers and innovators in the field. Teacher education, both the traditional variety and new transitional forms, can build on this remote access to students and experts to form new models of continuous professional development. The ability to join different levels of activity so closely is one of the powerful characteristics of the Internet on which The Math Forum capitalizes.

Organizationally, The Math Forum operates within Drexel University , but functionally it combines the collective intelligence and will of a variety of communities throughout the world. Traditionally, travel constraints limited a university's reach, but The Math Forum's products and services are available any place and any time that an Internet connection is available. Consequently, The Math Forum now reaches millions of users throughout the world.

Academically, The Math Forum has provided an important testbed and database for research at several levels (Chart 2).Within the field of education research, K. Ann Renninger of Swarthmore College and Wesley Shumar of Drexel's Department of Culture and Communication have studied the impact of The Math Forum on teachers and students, revealing some of the unique ways in which identity formation and mathematical knowledge development combine in this online context to increase student strategy use, independence and the making of connections in mathematical problem solving.

From a wider perspective, The Math Forum facilitates research collaborations with other departments within the university and from around the world. The Math Forum provides data, audience and program models on which studies and new innovations can be developed and tested. One exemplary model for such a collaboration is the Virtual Math Teams project led by Gerry Stahl of Drexel's College of Information Science and Technology, Wesley Shumar and myself. This project builds on the Problem of the Week library, the user base and prior research in order to develop real-time student collaboration services. An international team of researchers is exploring the potential for the Internet to support group knowledge building that enhances learning and enables mentoring programs to scale effectively.

Economically, The Math Forum not only brings in research dollars and program revenues, but its interactive services bridge Drexel and K-12 educational systems. This translates into a channel for preparing and attracting students to the university, engaging education professionals in advanced degree programs and driving innovations in education through close connections between needs and practices in the field and innovations and professional knowledge emerging from the university.

Historically, The Math Forum has focused on serving individual clients through free services and subscriptions. With encouragement from Drexel University , The Math Forum is expanding its clientele by directly addressing the needs of K-12 schools at the school and district levels. In fact, much of its core content ties in with state standards and assessments related to the No Child Left Behind Act and with the standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Additional expansion into the college market has also begun, by helping academic support units develop services for college freshmen and sophomores.

Providing high-quality services to an expanding client base has required the development of content, a dedicated staff, a community of volunteers, a loyal client base and a technology infrastructure to support the online interaction required. With the maturation of The Math Forum and a redefinition of its clientele, it became obvious that the organization should diversify its structure to include a dedicated client relations and business development unit. The Math Forum business development strategy includes a systematic marketing plan, a product development strategy, a sales team, strategic partnerships and a client relations approach.

The Math Forum's business development strategy marks an important convergence of the traditional academic practices of a university and the need for entrepreneurship. Consideration of the academic legacy, culture and current clientele of The Math Forum required that the development and implementation of the business strategy be executed with sensitivity and with a goal of expanding the good work of The Math Forum. It is a positive challenge for Drexel University to build a future in which The Math Forum successfully blends a business orientation with academic culture while serving a social need.

Stephen A. Weimar
Director, The Math Forum @ Drexel
Drexel University
3141 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia , PA 19104
215-895-0236
stephen.a.weimar@drexel.edu

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