With the recent educational policy changes, teacher trainer organizations in England have the added responsibility of ensuring the literacy and numeracy skills of new teachers. To support its members in this task, the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT) has entered into a partnership with Vretta to raise the mathematics proficiency of new teachers.
Vretta, along with Humber College and the Luxembourg Ministry of Education, were once again recognized for the implementation and the impact of their Assessment-for-Learning projects, MathemaTIC and the OCMT, with two awards from the international 2019 Brandon Hall Excellence Awards.
Skills Forward and Vretta collaborate to provide high-quality assessments, learning resources, and summative assessments to transform how organisations approach Functional Skills, GCSE and the employability skills development of learners in the UK.
OpenStax and Vretta have partnered to distribute high-quality OER print textbooks to institutions and students across Canada.
Seneca HELIX has partnered with Vretta, an award-winning, Canadian education technology company to support young entrepreneurs through their journey of building and leading successful ventures.
Seneca HELIX has partnered with Vretta, an award-winning, Canadian education technology company to support young entrepreneurs through their journey of building and leading successful ventures.
Vretta’s courseware platform, IntroMath, wins the Best Use of Formative Assessment Award at the International e-Assessment Award Ceremony in London, UK.
Vretta is excited to partner with the AI/Hub, Durham College’s Hub for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence for Business Solutions, to develop an advanced virtual NLP (Natural Language Processing) AI assistant to support student engagement on IntroMath.
Vretta and the Luxembourg Ministry of Education won the App-Based Game Group Award during the 6th International Educational Games Competition at the European Conference on Games-Based Learning for MathemaTIC.
Vretta and the Luxembourg Ministry of Education won the App-Based Game Group Award during the 6th International Educational Games Competition at the European Conference on Games-Based Learning for MathemaTIC.
Vretta, along with Humber College and the Luxembourg Ministry of Education, were recognized for the implementation and the impact of their Assessment-for-Learning projects, MathemaTIC and OCMT, with two Gold awards from the international 2018 Brandon Hall Excellence Awards.
The Luxembourg Ministry of Education (SCRIPT), in partnership with Vretta, the French Ministry of Education (DEPP) and leading testing and socio-economic research institutions, developed MathemaTIC as part of their Digital (4) Luxembourg strategy project - MathleTIC to help students enjoy mastering mental mathematics in a highly interactive digital environment.
With over 14 years of teaching mathematics to students in Grade 7 and 8 in Luxembourg, Yvan Kieffer has been committed to discovering methods to help his students engage and have fun learning mathematics. For the past two years, he has had the opportunity to work closely with other teachers from Luxembourg who have been part of the MathemaTIC project to design and develop interactive, voice-enabled resources to enhance math education for students.
Vretta, with their partners the Luxembourg Ministry of National Education and the French Ministry of Education, won two major awards at the second international e-Assessment Award Ceremony, while being highly commended for a third.
We are thrilled to announce that Vretta, alongside Humber College, has received a gold award from the prestigious Brandon Hall Group in the category “Best Advance in Custom Content” for the project: Addressing the Numeracy Gap through Immersive Technology Solutions.
Reflecting on the sessions that I had the opportunity to attend at OAME 2017, I have found that there was an unplanned theme running through many of them, one that is tied to the name of the conference - And Now For Something Completely Different. Many of the talks centered around the problem that when one activity or task is implemented in 2 classes, they can have completely different results.
This weekend we lost an influential figure in the world of mathematics, Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the Fields Medal for Mathematics, and an inspiration for women and girls everywhere.
The mayor of Woodstock, Ontario isn’t called the “Coolest Mayor East of the Rockies” for nothing. Elected in 2014 by a sizable margin, Mayor Trevor Birtch is a champion of inclusivity and sustainability. He puts long-term benefits for his community over short-term cost-savings for a few, and genuinely wants to leave he world in better shape than he found it.
Vretta’s online lessons for business and finance mathematics provide students with a good overview of the content.
For many years, we were very comfortable using McGraw’s Business Mathematics textbook, written by Jerome, and Lyryx Labs.
The Mathematics for Business and Finance resource from Vretta is very thorough. The online resources, specifically, add A LOT to our students’ learning process.
During this time, I have been using Vretta’s textbook and online resource for these courses. In the past, I also used resources from McGraw Hill (Jerome and Zima/Brown) and Pearson (Hummelbrunner). My students like Vretta’s resource because of the online capabilities for homework assignments.
Jean-Marie de Koninck is a Canadian mathematician and professor at Université Laval in Quebec City, and is the 2016 recipient of The Margaret Sinclair Memorial Award.
The quality of Vretta’s products is unmatched in the market today
I believe that creating a successful learning experience means meeting each learner at their individual skill level.
Vretta’s Mathematics of Business and Finance blended resource has been the standout learning tool for our students at Seneca College.
MathemaTIC Blocks, developed with teachers and researchers, came out of the assessment that students need a hands-on approach to problem-solving. This interactive tool offers flexibility for students to create an equation through a structured process. It helps students develop reasoning skills such as identification and recognition of relationships.
The Fields MathEd Forum hosted by the Fields Institute’s Centre for Research in Mathematical Sciences is dedicated to presenting the latest research and best practises from researchers and educators at all levels of mathematics education. At the January forum, I had the opportunity to listen to researchers share their current research projects in mathematics education. Here are a few of the highlights from the forum.
The Division of Evaluation, Planning and Performance (DEPP) at the French Ministry of Education has awarded Vretta the contract to deploy large-scale interactive assessments for their national tests at primary schools in France.
MathemaTIC's Amina Afif and Jos Bertemes have authored an article in the 2016 Yearbook published by the Consortium of Institutions for Development and Research in Education in Europe (CIDREE), which describes the approaches of MathemaTIC for reducing the equity gap and raising attainment for learners.
Humber College, one of the largest colleges in Canada, officially unveiled its Gratitude Hall - a key area of the college dedicated to celebrating and recognizing its supporters, alumni and friends.
The Fields Math Education Forum October meeting focussed on a single project called the Grade 9 Applied Mathematics Collaborative Inquiry Project. The project was a joint effort from the Ministry of Education, OAME, OMCA, and researchers at the University of Ottawa to document and support different teacher strategies in grade 9 applied math classes to improve student success.
The Ministry of National Education, Children and Youth of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg signs a convention with Vretta to extend the development and generalization of MathemaTIC for students in Cycle 3 (equivalent to Grades 3 & 4) and Grades 7 & 8. This is in support of the “Digital Lëtzebuerg” strategy announced by Prime Minister Xavier Bettel in October 2014, under the leadership and guidance of Education Minister, Claude Meisch, the Director of SCRIPT, Luc Weis, and the Coordinator of the Project, Amina Afif.
We are thrilled to announce that we have received the prestigious Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Learning award in the category of Learning And Development for increasing student success using blended learning programmes
Vretta was awarded a bronze award for the Best Use of Blended Learning.
At the end of July, I travelled to Hamburg, Germany for the 13th International Congress on Mathematics Education. With over 3,400 participants, and hundreds of papers, posters, lectures, and discussion groups, you would think it would be almost too big to make sense of.
However, something that quickly becomes clear is that the numeracy issues that we are facing in Ontario are not an anomaly. All over the world, people recognize the need to keep driving the art and craft of teaching mathematics forward, while keeping up with the new challenges that today’s students introduce.
Since 2014, the Division of Evaluation, Planning and Performance (DEPP) at the French Ministry of Education has piloted and implemented digital assessments for their national tests conducted in secondary schools. However, as is typical in most countries, infrastructure and the availability of devices is much stronger in secondary schools than in primary schools.
In September 2015, the DEPP entered into a partnership with Vretta, a global educational technology solutions provider, to collaboratively design a deployment plan and develop a technology solution to assess the performance of primary school students in France.
During an interview on RTL Letzebuerge, Minister Claude Meisch – Minister of National Education, Children and Youth, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, shared his positive views of MathemaTIC.
MathemaTIC is a personalized learning environment that provides students with digital tools designed to identify and strengthen areas of weakness in mathematics. Students have 24/7 access to these tools on any mobile device, including computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
This is a proud moment for Vretta & all the international partners on the MathemaTIC project.
The Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, made an announcement that the personalized learning platform, MathemaTIC, developed in partnership with the The Ministry of National Education, Children and Youth of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, international partners and Vretta, makes Luxembourg an international front-runner in digital learning!
During a lesson on effective interest rates, Maria Sairoglou, Professor of Business and Finance Mathematics at Seneca College, decides to put down the textbook and have a little fun.
A credit card company, she says, has just set up a table on campus, and students are flocking to it to sign up for their first credit card. She reminds her class that credit is important to build, and that according to a huge sign next to the table, the interest rate is only 1.75% per month.
New Feature: Live Stream
This month, I attended the Fields Math Education Forum remotely using the live stream that was made available for the first time last month. It worked great – I wish it had been implemented years ago! Of course, visiting the Fields Institute in person is wonderful and the community is terrific, but if you are unable to visit the Fields Institute in person I definitely recommend the live stream. The stream shows both the speakers on stage, and the slides being shown, which was great.
The Fields Mathematics Education Forum meeting this month was a Book Talk about Vital Directions in Mathematics Education(2013). Each speaker at the Forum took on a chapter from the book to discuss with attendees.
From “Connecting spatial reasoning to math learning” to “Building Thinking Classrooms”, the Research Day at the Fields Math Ed Forum was an interesting learning experience filled with thought-provoking discussions, presentations and poster sessions, centered around evaluating the current math education climate and practices used in Ontario and Canada as well as identifying better methodologies for success in mathematics.
In the morning session, Dr. Catherine Bruce, an Associate Professor at Trent University, shared her findings of spatial reasoning and its influence on math learning in young children. As a self-proclaimed new comer to the spatial reasoning research world, Dr. Bruce quickly identified that there has yet to be a great consensus on what spatial reasoning is.
I attended the 41 st annual AMATYC conference, which was held in New Orleans and had approximately 1,400 attendees from colleges across the country.
The three day conference was a rigorous series of back-to-back presentations and discussions on innovative ways of helping students with developmental mathematics, in addition to numerous other topics.
The Canadian Mathematical Society is the largest conference in the country that is dedicated to mathematics and math education. This conference brings together specialists from all over the world and consists of specialized sessions and plenary lectures that are followed by an extended discussion.
It was great to meet specialists who take interest in math education at the post-secondary level, with a focus on students who have just transitioned into a post-secondary institution from high school.
Humber College, the institution leading the implementation of the provincial Math Assessment for placement and Remediation resources, announced that it has selected Vretta to be the partner in facilitating the implementation of these resources at Humber and other participating colleges across Ontario.
The provincial assessment and remediation resources were developed through the College Student Achievement Project (CSAP) with all the colleges in Ontario, and it was funded by the Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities. The overall purpose of the CSAP Assessment Project is to enhance student success at college. Building on assessment items submitted by college faculty, the CSAP team (with Vretta as its technology partner) developed an online diagnostic math assessment, based on the principles of Assessment for Learning. The assessment items have been psychometrically analysed and validated through extensive field trials involving about 10,000 students at high schools and colleges in Ontario.
Glasgow was the venue for the annual meeting of the Association for Educational Assessment–Europe (AEA-E) from November 4-6, 2015. I attended the conference along with my colleagues, Anand Karat and Charles Anifowose, from Vretta. There were some 300 other delegates from over 30 countries at the conference. The theme of the conference was Assessment and Social Justice and many of the papers presented focused on ways in which assessment policies and practices are changing to promote greater social justice through education.
Conference delegates were for the most part professionals in the educational assessment field, working for national and international assessment or examination agencies, or academics whose teaching and research is centred on aspects of assessment. There are several associations of such people in the world of which the AEA-E is one of the most popular. The conference featured keynote addresses from leading figures in the field as well as concurrent sessions in which members presented the result of their latest work. However, conferences are not all work; this one featured a malt whisky tasting in which a professional whisky blender introduced us to the delights of malt whiskies from five different regions of Scotland.
We would like to express our deepest thanks to Vretta for supporting the Haiti Awareness Trip 2015. Our entire group of students, faculty and trip leaders wish to extend our appreciation for all that you did to help facilitate this trip for the group that travelled to Haiti between April 26 and May 3, 2015.
The experience proved to be life changing for so many students in our group. A few students were on a plane for the first time, a few had never been out of Canada, most of them didn’t know what it felt like to be part an ethic minority group that didn’t speak the native language.
Glasgow was the venue for the annual meeting of the Association for Educational Assessment–Europe (AEA-E) from November 4-6, 2015. I attended the conference along with my colleagues, Anand Karat and Charles Anifowose, from Vretta. There were some 300 other delegates from over 30 countries at the conference. The theme of the conference was Assessment and Social Justice and many of the papers presented focused on ways in which assessment policies and practices are changing to promote greater social justice through education.
Conference delegates were for the most part professionals in the educational assessment field, working for national and international assessment or examination agencies, or academics whose teaching and research is centred on aspects of assessment. There are several associations of such people in the world of which the AEA-E is one of the most popular. The conference featured keynote addresses from leading figures in the field as well as concurrent sessions in which members presented the result of their latest work. However, conferences are not all work; this one featured a malt whisky tasting in which a professional whisky blender introduced us to the delights of malt whiskies from five different regions of Scotland.
We are excited to have Vretta offer its support for the FSU Rotaract Haiti Awareness Trip 2015 (HAT’15) for participating students at Fanshawe College.
The HAT’15 is a social consciousness trip planned to provide participating students at Fanshawe College with the first-hand international exposure to what they have learned in the classroom. Through this trip, students will interact and witness personal testimonials from people living in situations that are different from what they experience here in Canada.
Through this initiative, students will be involved in,
MOOCs are steadily gaining ground in the post-secondary education system. With the convenience of flexible online class times, MOOCs allow learners to fit courses into their own schedules.
In 2014, the country’s first MOOC for Business Math was successfully delivered by Holland College that is located in the beautiful Prince Edward Island. Of the 85 students enrolled in the pilot MOOC, 71 were from Canada, with the remaining taking the course all around the globe.
This report summarizes the development and delivery, student demographic, and institutional impact of the MOOC for Business Math that was delivered at Holland College.
Vretta’s textbook and online resources have been very helpful in achieving student success. There are lots of examples in the textbook, and the online lessons are a great addition to in-class materials/lessons. The labs provide an additional assessment tool and study aid for the students.
I used the Vretta PowerPoint decks almost every class. They were a great way to present the material. As were the solution manuals, which provided detailed solutions for students.
Vretta’s support team have always responded promptly to my issues and have always solved whatever challenges we have come across.
Overall, I believe the online lessons/labs are a great resource for students because they provide additional examples that are interactive in nature and the labs provide additional practice opportunities for students.
I have been teaching Mathematics of Finance at Seneca College for around 5 years and prior to that I have also taught finance math at George Brown College. I find Vretta’s textbook to be easy to read and understand. The questions and solutions are clear and concise. The language used is more straight-forward than Jerome’s. This is an important Consideration because of the number of international students we have in class who have found it tough to read the textbook in the past. The online lessons helped everyone in class especially the border-line students. In the past I have used both Wiley Plus and Aplia for their online labs in my statistics classes. I would always hear of students having many problems with these, for example being stuck with a question or not knowing what to do. I would often get dragged into difficulties students would have.
The experience with Vretta’s resources has been very good. Students find every part of the system intuitive and easy to use, and students often come and tell me that the lessons are very helpful when they study. It only takes my students about half an hour to an hour to complete their homework every week, and from what I have seen, that is time well-spent. The material is in line with our course learning outcomes. Most importantly, students are performing better on their exams. I can clearly see that they are getting a better grasp of the finance math concepts and I trust that they are much better equipped. Overall, working on this system has always been very easy and quick. Great experience!
We have started trying out MathemaTIC at our school for Cycle 4 students. It is definitely motivating for my students and they seem to like it much more than working from a traditional textbook. The mathematical items are visual and they keep my students engaged. Students also have access to continuous online help, if they need it.
What I like the most about MathemaTIC that it is adapted to each of my students learning levels and keeps raising the bar as they are working through the items. I have also noticed that my students are spending more time practicing mathematics now. They seem to be enjoying the learning experience and I hope that MathemaTIC will soon be made available for all of the higher grades too.
Most of our textbooks are in German language, as we get them from Germany. This makes it difficult for parents to be able to help students as most of them don’t know German. It is great that this system is available for students in French, German, and Portuguese.
Students have not used anything like this for any other subjects. They are happy to realize that their computers can not only be used to listen to music, play games, and Google search, but also to learn Mathematics in a fun and engaging way!
"It does not feel like homework at all. It feels like I am playing and learning math." - David Patricio, Student
"I think this is really cool and I surely prefer this to a textbook because there is less to write!" - Sara Ferreira, Student
"I like being on my computer a lot and I have completed the first unit already. I enjoy working with this math system." - Odo Chiu, Student
"It is very easy to access and use the different tools. I like the designs used and the way the calculations have been presented." - Loec Estveves, Student
Math is intimidating to most students because they have a hard time recognizing and retaining fundamental math concepts. Instead of reasoning out ways to solve the problem, students rely on memorizing how to solve the problems.
Vretta’s resources are excellent! The dynamics and tone of the lessons and labs attract my students and keep them engaged. Like reading, math involves many cognitive processes and systems and Vretta has identified this throughout their resources. The textbook is well written and there are endless algorithmically generated questions of varying degrees of difficulty for students to practice. They teach from a conceptual perspective and help students build on concepts that relate to their learning. They’re continually challenged and supported every step of the way.
I would also like to mention that Vretta’s support staff is the best I’ve seen. Their HelpDesk is quick.
In six years of teaching QNM106, Vretta’s Mathematics of Business and Finance blended resource has definitely been the standout learning tool for our students. The online lessons and labs are very much tools for the modern world, and as such appeal greatly to our students. This is evidenced by the fact that students’ participation in the course increased significantly since we began using these resources, and more students complete their homework assignments now than ever before.
The exciting approach to teaching mathematics in the online lessons, which are animated and highly interactive, makes studying seem less like work, and more like a fun learning activity. Students have not only been completing their lessons, but reviewing them multiple times before their tests. The results speak for themselves, and this increased participation was reflected in the students’ performance in tests, midterm exams, and the final exam. A great feature of the textbook is the way it explains use of the calculator to solve problems. It presents step by step instructions to solve all the problems where use of the financial calculator is relevant. Great value-add!
The Vretta Mathematics of Business and Finance textbook was very thorough and the online resources add A LOT to the text and classes. The online labs and lessons are excellent for student practice.
Any challenges we faced as instructors in delivering the course was quickly turned to positives because of the prompt action from Vretta’s support team. My experience with Vretta’s support team was fantastic!
The resources did a great job of supporting students, and more practice via the labs and lessons meant more student success in the courses in which we utilized these resources!
I was introduced to the team at Vretta and their business and finance math resources in 2012. I reviewed their textbook and online resources with my colleagues, and decided to adopt them for the MA101 and MA10037 math courses at our college. We have approximately 1,000 students who use these resources throughout the year so it is very important to have high quality resources and support from the publishing company.
My students and I like Vretta’s textbook because it is affordable, light weight (which makes it easy to carry around), and detailed. I specifically like the merchandising charts that are in the textbook. I use charts extensively to help provide students with the big picture understanding of how various variables are interlinked and it makes the explanation a lot less complex. I’ve extended the use of charts to ratios and proportions and break-even analysis and my students love this approach. I also like the use of timelines in solving problems. It brings a clear visual understanding of the problem and I strongly encourage my students to follow this method of solving problems. Math is quite frightening for a lot of students so creative problem solving approaches like these have helped reduce the intimidation for students.
Vretta’s support is exceptional. They are always responsive and available to make sure everything is running well for our students. They have even integrated their eTextbooks and online lessons into our course management system (eLearn) and have successfully created a smooth handshake with our assessment platform (Maple TA). They worked with us to design and develop an interactive Learning Plan for students to be able select resources and track their progress through the semester.
It has been a wonderful experience working with the team at Vretta and we look forward to this continued partnership to helping students succeed in mathematics.
I, Dianne Krasuski, have been a member of the Humber College faculty for over three decades. Humber had been using the Hummelbrunner textbook for over two decades in our Essentials of Business Math and Math of Finance courses. It was openly acknowledged that it would be difficult to switch to another resource at Humber. As of Fall 2014, the overwhelming majority of our faculty voted to switch all our business math courses to Vretta’s Mathematics of Business and Finance, 2nd Edition.
The most important aspect of any resource I use in the classroom is its accuracy and precision when presenting the subject matter, specifically in the textbook. I have been asked for feedback on both the Hummelbrunner and Jerome books, have made many suggestions for improvements but have seen these corrections and suggestions dismissed. Errors which were pointed out in one edition would continue to appear in subsequent editions causing professors at Humber to create correction handouts, guided worksheets and online resources to help students. Vretta stands apart in this aspect. It carefully considered feedback from my colleagues and I and made sure that the most accurate, relevant and precise content was presented to students.
The relevance of the content for each chapter is tightly aligned with what students need to succeed upon graduation, and the book provides professors and students with a meaningful reference for teaching and studying. The clarity in the presentation of concepts is unparalleled. As a professor using the 2nd Edition, I can state emphatically that when an error is pointed out, the team at Vretta ensures that it is addressed immediately. Vretta shares my drive for perfection!
Vretta’s unique passion for building the Mathematics of Business and Finance tools is unequalled, and its level of detail and commitment to “getting it right” is amazing.
The online tools Vretta provides to students are distinctive in supporting students outside the traditional methods of utilizing the textbook and in-class lectures. Vretta has ensured that students can easily find all these resources through its learning management system. In the time we have been utilizing the resources, both professors and students have found them to be meaningful and I believe that they have had a positive impact on student success.
Finally, the support I receive from Vretta’s Help Desk is great. Anytime a question arises from either professors or students, the Help Desk provides a response in an unbelievably short amount of time. As a professor, I feel supported and am never on my own to figure out the problems students inevitably present. Vretta helpfully shares the responsibility of ensuring that students feel supported throughout the semester.
Both the Jerome and Hummelbrunner books have been around a very long time, but it is only a matter of time before others discover that Vretta has built a resource which matches and exceeds the content applications of those resources. The resource has been developed by listening to professor feedback and ensuring that the resource stays current and valuable for students.
I certainly hope Vretta keeps up the good work, and I am happy to say that I have a new favorite resource to ensure my students are equipped to take on future courses and the outside world once they leave Humber College.
I believe that creating a successful learning experience means meeting each learner at their individual skill level. My largest challenges in facilitating Business Math is the diversity in math skills.
Vretta’s online math resources provide a flexible and safe learning space for students to practice the concepts they are learning in the classroom. I can survey the online math quizzes, see which questions are challenging and use that information to prepare classroom lectures.
In addition, the staff at Vretta are patient in setting up an online environment that is unique to my needs and always available to respond to my questions and course alterations.
Overall, I have really enjoyed using Vretta’s online learning environment.
Vretta’s online lessons for business and finance mathematics provide students with a good overview of the content.
The labs are an excellent resource which a number of my student do over and over again to improve their marks. This is a huge positive. I have used the PowerPoint presentations as a basis of my lessons. The textbook is very good and Vretta’s support is EXCELLENT!!!
Vretta’s hybrid resources make math relatable to real life.
The online labs are an excellent form of practice for my students. They work through the questions not only because marks are attached to the labs but also helps with assessing their understanding of concepts that are being taught in class.
The PowerPoint presentations are an excellent resource and helps in the planning of our own PowerPoint lessons. The textbook/eTextbook is reader friendly, has lots of examples, and is easy to follow.
Vretta’s support is extremely fast! Any issues are taken care of ASAP. All of the support is directly handled by Vretta’s support team instead of having it go through the instructor.
A student of mine in the 2nd semester Finance Math course stated that she would not have passed the 1st semester Business Math course without the online lessons and labs. She mentioned that she likes the reinforcement that lessons and labs provide.
Most professors teaching business and finance math for diploma students will agree with me when I say that most of our students find basic mathematical concepts difficult to understand. I have taught at Seneca College using the Jerome textbook (with Lyryx) for at least 10 years, and at George Brown College using the Hummelbrunner textbook for around 5 years. Both of these textbooks have done little to address this problem. In fact, with so many visa students who speak English as a second language, these books make it very difficult to read for our students. This has resulted in students
hardly using their textbooks. Students who fear math are even more intimidated when they see these textbooks.
In 2011, I was introduced to Vretta’s Mathematics of Business and Finance textbook and my students have really liked this book. They find the book very user-friendly, to the point, and well written. The examples are practical and are solved in a clear way. The level of difficulty has been very appropriate for my students. Also, the calculator methods are illustrated in great detail and with clarity.
My students love the online lessons. They find them to be an enjoyable pre-learning tool and use them to prepare for the labs, tests, and exams, and to review the course material. Attendance has not been affected and at the same time students’ marks have gone up! The prepared PowerPoint lectures that the resource includes are a fantastic in-class teaching tool. They present the concepts well, and the animations add to the understanding and engage the students! Bottom-line: my students have been doing really well since the introduction of this resource.
I’ve been using Vretta’s resources to teach the MA101 business math course from the time they wereintroduced at Mohawk College in the fall of 2012. Prior to that, I taught using the Jerome textbook for a semester.
Vretta’s team, working with us, have developed a customized interactive learning plan for students to access all of their course resources at one place. Earlier, students had to login to eLearn to access their course resources and Maple TA separately to access their labs. From the new learning plan, students can access the MapleTA labs, Vretta’seTextbook, Tutorials, and PowerPoint presentations. It has become a seamless one point access for all of these resources. It has also been easy for me to demonstrate these resources to students during the first week of class.
I use online resources not only for my math courses but also for my accounting courses. Vretta’s resources are one of the easier systems to demonstrate to students as it is easy and seamless to navigate.
I like Vretta’s tutorials because they are straightforward, and explain concepts in a practical and down-to-earth fashion. The language used is also very relatable, in addition to the voice scripts for those who need that assistance.
We have used elements from Vretta’s PowerPoint presentations to create our own custom ones that I use in class. I make alterations to them as and when necessary based on what I teach my students. I like the animations in them and it helps me with my classes.
Vretta’s support is super-fast! Last semester, I had a small technical issue as a link was not working. I emailed their team after class. By the time I reached home, Vretta’s support team sent me an email mentioning that it was fixed. It was instantaneous, which is something that I appreciate.
Regarding the textbook, I have come across many textbooks that complicate the language of the text for students. However, the language used in Vretta’s textbook is very straightforward and I have not had any complaints from my students. We have recommended that Vretta include additional sections like Index Numbers, Contribution Margin Ratio, and Effective Markdown into the second edition of their textbook as we teach these concepts.
I have to say that things are running quite well. I wish I was doing the course again next term!!
I’ve surveyed the students several times and they’re quite happy with online material.
Having the students complete the lessons has accelerated the class room presentations and made it more interactive.
I dedicate the last hour to written group work, which is also graded. Seems to really help the students grasp the concepts.
Support from Vretta’s Helpdesk is FANTASTIC!! Thank You. Please pass that on to them.
From the critical pedagogical point of view in the educational industry, generally, if you listen to the same lecture voice continuously for around 20 minutes, the probability of you tuning out is the reality of learning, especially if you have a class at 8:00 a.m. or after 5:00 pm. Team-teaching can be used as a solution to overcome this situation by creating modulations in the method of delivery. To achieve this next-generation learning experience in our classrooms, we toggle between our lectures, Vretta’s interactive online lessons, and the Texas Instrument’s BAII Plus emulator. This teaching method is proving to deliver exciting results for our students when it is coupled with reinforcing applications developed from a business perspective.
For about 20 years, I have taught the Mathematics of Finance to students in the School of Accounting and Financial Services. Since our students major in Accounting and Finance, they realize that this subject is foundational for them to succeed in their chosen career path. In 5th semester, our students have the option a taking a coop semester with a professional practitioner or business operating in their field of study. To succeed at getting a coop placement, they have to go through a personal interview process together with a challenge question reflective of the business application. In many cases, it is their ability to comprehend and find the solution quickly that determines whether they get the position or relinquish it to another student from another college with superior skills. In one case, our student answered the question so quickly, that the prospective coop placement felt compelled to accept this student. Why, because of the passion to succeed in the reality of a 21st century business environment.
However, mathematics is often not seen with this level of passion. Our responsibility has been to make our students see the immense value in the subject and get excited, I mean really excited, about its application to their success. Vretta’s on-line lessons and the real-world examples and cases in the Mathematics of Business and Finance textbook and accompanying resources help us achieve this “wow-moment” for our students. It is a known fact that the way students learn is rapidly transforming and we, in the education industry, have to position ourselves on this trend line or cease to be an effective instrument for educational delivery. Students now spend most of their time online where they constantly communicate, research, and learn. Students are no longer one dimensional learners. They are now fully functional visual, auditory, kinesthetic learners or next generation learners. These hybrid resources effectively cater to these different styles of learning – even the emergent styles of the 21st century. The interactive online lessons work well for the visual learners, the voice for every scene works well for the auditory learners, and the online labs work well for the kinesthetic learners and we are on the crest of following them into the next learning style that has yet to be researched and clearly enunciated.
The online lessons help by being a good reinforcement resource for our students. The Miami-Dade Study clearly indicates that attendance is the number one factor in student success, but attendance is the number one problem in a 24/7 economy with tuition fee increases and debt loads being the number one concern in supporting the knowledge economy. If a student misses a class, they are no longer victim to the reality of this 21st Century economy of the full-time student with a full-time job trying to pay for the full-time debt load. Our students can now review the classroom material at their own pace. We recognize that the pace of learning varies in this Century from the “drip” method to the “quick-hit” method. The lessons also standardize the way all our students learn at our college so that no matter which section or which professor’s class the student is registered in, there is consistency in the delivery of the educational outcomes of the course.
One final thing that we would like to mention is that printed instruction manuals are decreasing used by modern learners today. The on-line chat feature available to students on Vretta’s intromath.ca website is there 24/7 to provide real time instruction that provides our students with an excellent interactive training experience every time and anytime they need it. Yes, even at midnight when students discover the ”midnight oil” that keeps them learning 24/7. In a nutshell, we would like to say that most of our students have provided us with very new and quite revolutionary feedback on this learning experience.
It is indeed the next generation of learning materials and mathematics of finance has surely been transformed into an exciting subject for them with results in business success far into the future.
I have been teaching Mathematics for Finance (QNM106) for many years. I started using Vretta’s Mathematics of Business and Finance blended resources (textbook, online lessons and labs) from September 2011 and I noticed that many of my students were better prepared for class and they performed better on their tests and exams.
In my opinion, the online lessons are very helpful, especially for ESL students. As you know, at Seneca we have a great many ESL who struggle as a result of their limited English. I feel this sort of tool is a great benefit to these learners. They can hear the vocabulary pronounced, they can see keywords written out, and by doing the lesson in an interactive way they tie it all together. And best of all, this multi-channel learning can be done at the students own pace, at the time of their choosing and repeated as often as required. At the same time, for non ESL students the same benefits exist and it is a good reinforcement tool for my regular students. Students that need a supplement to the classroom experience will find the online lesson helpful. Students that are forced to miss a class will find this an effective tool in catching up and keeping up. What about results? I notice in my classroom that more students are keeping up, more students are prepared for class. This means higher student satisfaction and better scores.
What about the students? I ask my students what they think about the lessons and labs. They say they are helpful and they like them. Recently, I took the publisher into one of my classes to get first-hand feedback from my students and even when prompted to be honest, they mentioned that they found the online lessons and labs helpful. The class following this, one of my students offered the following (unsolicited) comment, “the labs are a great idea, and very helpful for the students.” I would say that this learning method provides the real benefit of hearing, seeing, and doing, as opposed to the traditional method of just reading a book and working through it. And my students agree!
“When individuals change their mind set from fixed to growth, their learning potential increases drastically” – Vretta’s textbook encourages to develop a growth mindset for mathematics with the help of high quality online labs/ tutorials for the students.
The detailed oriented philosophy combined with practical examples, followed in the textbook, helps the students understand the concepts very easily. Me & my students love the online resources especially the lessons and labs as they are unambiguous, uniform to navigate and provide information on the progress of students as well.
Vretta’s helpdesk is very prompt in responding to queries and has an excellent pool of talent.
Vretta’s combination of textbook and online learning resources go a long way to contributing to student success. I have no apprehension referring students to explanations in the textbook as it is written in concise, yet manageable language. Each chapter culminates with a case study which ties together the concepts that were taught and real world examples. The students feel a sense of accomplishment when the big picture comes into focus.
Interactive lessons, coupled with challenging online labs reinforce our in-class lectures. Students have specifically mentioned they appreciate not only the instant feedback on performance, but also the ability to view full solutions to problems they struggled with. I personally enjoy the relative hands off nature of the online platform.
Vretta offers a great form of instant online support that is beneficial to both the student and professor. Minor login or settings issues can be solved without the lag that repeated email conversation involves, which I have experienced with other online platform providers. The all too convenient “contact us” function allows for an instant messaging conversation with tech support, solving problems very quickly.
I have seen that Vretta’s resources are enriching our students’ business math learning experience.
We at Holland College createda MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) for Mathematics of Business and Finance using Vretta’s hybrid resources. The MOOC was launched in the winter of 2014 via a custom design login portal created by Vretta that has the same theme as our college website (//www.intromath.ca/hollandcollege/). The course utilized Vretta’s interactive online lessons, labs, eTextbook, solution manuals, and PowerPoint presentations. The college is happy with the pilot as we had students enroll for the course from the general community not only at PEI but also outside of the province.
In addition to the MOOC, we also ran three sections using Vretta’s business and finance math hybrid resources and the results of which were quite successful. Vretta’s system provides great flexibility especially because of the interactive online lessons and labs that have provided us with the ability to host the entire course online. In addition to Vretta’s resources, I’ve also recorded my lectures that will be provided in conjunction with Vretta’s resources for students to be able to work on their own. Next year, we are planning to move completely online with these hybrid resources for all of our sections so students can view my lectures, work through the lessons and labs, refer to the eTextbook and solution manuals completely on their own.
In class, I used all the PowerPoint presentations that were provided by Vretta. These PPTs are clicker enabled so I would have to open it within the Turning Technology software to be able to enable the clicker functionality in class. The solution manuals that accompany the book are handy. Additionally, I also used the instructor test bank to provide students with supplemental questions that I included for them to practice as through the course.
Vretta’s Help Desk (instructor-support@intromath.ca) is fast to respond. They have a good team out there!
I have been using Vretta’s business math and finance math resources from 2011.
The textbook is well written and the etextbook is user friendly and is easily accessible by students and teachers. The PowerPoint presentations are a great resource that I have customized to my lesson style and plans. The online teaching and testing resources provide my students with good amount of practice.
I would also like to state that Vretta’s support is absolutely fantastic!
When you have a struggling 50-year old student exclaim with excitement "I am on a roll!" using Vretta's resources, you know that you have provided him with something that is working!
Beyond its ability to cater to all types of students, what impressed me the most about the online lessons and labs is that they are so tightly integrated with the textbook. This was missing with Lyryx and of course Lyryx has only questions (labs). The online lessons step students through the material one topic at a time, making sure that students have a good foundation before moving on to the next part. We let them go over the questions as many times as they need to until they get the mark they’re aiming for. The lessons and labs have helped my students a lot, and frankly, they like learning this way. The textbook presents concepts and problem solutions very clearly and it makes students less terrified of using the textbook, an important part of the package.
I use the online test-bank to create different versions of quizzes and exams for my students and the support from Vretta has been great. Students have also told me that they have liked the support. Everyone knows that students are pretty frank about their opinions. Well, I asked them what they feel about the online lessons they said “They’re great!”. This good response does not surprise me as I saw value in this hybrid resource when I evaluated it during the textbook review process.
Students of any learning style are benefitting from the dynamic integration of Vretta’s textbook, online lessons, and homework labs. The online INTERACTIVE lessons are the most impressive combination of quality production and robust learning Resource that I have seen.
Couple the interactive lessons with a well written visually appealing textbook and series algorithmically based homework labs, which provide informative feedback, and you have THE leading learning resource available.
The use of the Vretta’s resources has been a tremendous complement to both my in-class and online courses, and has led to an improved learning experience for the students and myself.
The quality of Vretta’s products are unmatched in the market today!
Teaching mathematics by distance is a challenge, but it’s what we excel at here at Northern College. Students connect to us to receive live, interactive lectures beamed to sites across Northern Ontario using Centra, a web-based lecture platform. My students connect to us from places such as Hearst, Attawapiskat, Cochrane, Smooth Rock Falls, Kirkland Lake, or even Southern Ontario locations like Stratford and St. Thomas.
Delivering a lecture simultaneously to these sites is great, but there’s much more that’s required for a successful course. Students need to complete assignments, and obviously the more assignments they do, the better they get. The old ‘snail-mail’ paper-based routine doesn’t work, especially when you’re teaching to remote locations.
Even if I wasn’t delivering by distance, class sizes of 50 students or more make it a daunting task to provide students with the quality and quantity of feedback they need. The only effective model I’ve found for handling assignments (and often tests) is through using online software. I’ve tried several textbook and software packages over the past five years that I’ve been teaching this course, and I’ve never been entirely satisfied with them. This is the first year I’ve tried Vretta, and it’s
by far the most user-friendly.
There are two significant advantages to using Vretta’s resources, and
it’s hard for me to decide which one is the most useful, so I’ll give you
both.
1. The most obvious one is the user interface. It’s clean, simple to use, and engaging. I think from the student’s perspective, this is the biggest advantage.
2. From the instructor’s perspective, the speed of the response when I report a problem is what makes the difference. I can’t report a rounding error to a software publisher and wait two weeks (or even two days) for the problem to be fixed. I’ve found that with Vretta, there are very few problems like these. If I do have a problem, I am getting same-day, and often same-hour response times. Students can be tough customers to please, but this year, I haven’t had any students complaining about Vretta. That may sound like small praise, but it’s actually unprecedented for me to go through a semester without having constant complaints about software glitches. When students see their grades corrected that quickly, they’re happy—and so am I.
Many students don’t like math, and I haven’t made it my mission in life to convert them. For me, the important thing is that I know that when they graduate, they have pounded through enough problems to be competent. To be honest, some of them probably don’t like the resources, because they’ve been conditioned to panic any time they see numbers. That’s a result of their prior exposure to math as they’ve gone through the primary and secondary school systems, and it’s not Vretta’s fault. But since feedback is effortless, students can hone their skills to perfection. The traditional curriculum delivery models don’t
allow for the same opportunity, in my experience.
If you want headache-free delivery of course content, Vretta is the way to go.
Vretta’s Mathematics of Business and Finance textbook and online resources are very well suited for students at the college level. Our students who use the resources, benefit a lot from them. The resources are very user friendly and students can do them on their own time. I noticed that those students who use Vretta’s resources perform much better than the rest on their tests and exams.
I use the PowerPoint presentations in my class and they are very useful more so than any other math PowerPoint that I have used in the past. They clearly break-down examples and provide detailed solutions in a step-by-step manner which is useful to guide the class through their practice.
We have seen that Vretta’s learning resources are very helpful for our students and are easy to use and resourceful for instructors.
I have been teaching the Business Math course since January 2008. The size of my class ranges from 25 to over 40 students per term. We have used various online learning and assessment systems, such as Lyryx, MathXL and Vretta’s Intromath.ca.
Intromath.ca stands out of its peers by its unique vision of online lessons: interactive learning material with audio and video support. The online lessons help students to evaluate their progress and build their confidence during self-learning. It acts as an individual instructor for each student with 24/7 availability. These online lessons also help me to monitor my students’ progress on the course. This feature is a great compliment to online course flexibility.
Intromath.ca also leaves me a great impression with their quick response to students, instructors, and college administrators’ requests. The help I receive is immediate and efficient. Their technical support team often goes out of their way to help instructors and students to run the course smoothly.
Their recent initiative to let students register in their course online without a textbook makes it possible for me and my students to start the course on time. This way, my students would not miss the beginning of the term due to delay from textbook ordering.Thank you for the great job.
For many years, we were very comfortable using McGraw’s Business Mathematics textbook written by Jerome along with Lyryx Labs. In 2011, when we were introduced to Vretta’s Mathematics of Business and Finance textbook and online resources, I was a little skeptical of this new blended method of teaching business and finance math. However, after a thorough review conducted by our textbook review committee, we saw value in the textbook and online resources and decided to adopt them to teach all our full-time math for business and math for finance courses. Since then, the resources have been proving to be a highly effective way to teach our students.
The combination of online lessons/labs with the classroom experience is a huge advantage as it caters to the diverse student audience with varied learning styles that we have in these courses. The online lessons are especially beneficial for students with English as a second language which constitutes almost 57% of our student population.
Our students have been giving us very positive feedback on their learning experience. They comment that with these resources they can learn at their own pace, especially before quizzes and exams. The engaging overview that each online lesson provides, improves students’ attention level in class and reduces their fear of mathematics. As the subject leader, I have been dealing with Vretta’s support staff and would like to add that their support has been extremely prompt and helpful. They work closely with me and my faculty to ensure that we are all effectively using the resources to obtain the most from them. They are also very responsive to instructor and student feedback, to perfect this learning experience for our students and teaching experience for my faculty.
Intromath.ca has a very user friendly interface, is easy to navigate and easy to figure things out on your own. Although, the support staff are very, very helpful, and readily available to provide assistance expeditiously.
As a teacher I really like the lesson/lab concept. The lessons give students a second, third, even fourth opportunity to review the subject matter on their own, in an interactive lecture format. The labs are useful in preparing students for tests, much like in class quizzes. The advantage for teachers is they do not to have to mark and give feedback to every student, allowing time for other things, such as spending one-on-one time with students who need it.
Intromath.ca does offer a lot of resources to the teacher as well, for example, the opportunity to review labs and provide feedback when necessary, easy access to marks, and a test question database to help generate quizzes and tests. My experiences with Intromath.ca have been very positive.
We had a very positive experience with our new Business Math Course delivered with Vretta’s resources. The students enjoyed the topics.
They were impressed with the lab work. There was not a steep learning curve when they went online. The labs were very similar in content and wording to the lessons taught in class. The students liked the opportunity to be able to try a lab more than once and learned from the feedback they received. Being able to try a lab more than once is a type of "drill for skill". If after a few attempts, the student is successful, then they have "mastered' that topic and that mark is representative of their current ability.
Weaker students enjoyed and benefited from the extra practice in the online lessons. If a student missed a class, it was easy for them to go online and view the lessons.
It was easy to modify the labs to obtain a test that satisfied the topics being studied. The support staff are quick to help and are very accommodating. I wish that Vretta would now develop programs for my other math courses.
Mathematics is a particularly difficult subject to teach because students have a hard time grasping the key concepts covered in their textbook. Due to fundamental gaps in understanding of these key concepts, students struggle with mathematics and thus tend to try and memorize how to solve questions instead of using fundamental understanding to reason out ways to solve problems.
Vretta’s interactive tutorials tend to concentrate on the fundamental concepts students need to know and thus they are an important part of building the students understanding of the course outcomes. Their tutorials engage students by having them actually interact with the concepts as soon as they are introduced to ensure students understanding. This allows students to quickly, and more thoroughly, understand the key concepts which then leads to more satisfied and successful students.
We have been using Vretta’s content in our business courses since September 2012. We have been very impressed with their strong technical expertise and willingness to help us customize how the student interacts with both the college’s and Vretta’s content within our Learning Management System. This has helped us tremendously as our college moves to a blended learning environment.
There is a new verb at our College. It is “Vrettacize”. You vrettacize mathematics by providing professional looking student access to tutorials that help students interact and test their knowledge of key mathematical concepts so that they can learn them as quickly as possible and in a fun way..
Vretta learning resources have brought new meaning to the learning experience of my students. The textbook flows from chapter to chapter seamlessly by providing a thorough understanding of the course material through numerous clear examples. In addition to the textbook, the online Lessons and Labs allow students to master what has been taught in the classroom setting. The interactive lessons stimulate the students’ minds and encourage them to practice and comprehend the content and equations. The online learning environment works ‘with’ the students individual needs and is not a ‘one box fits all’ model that can often frustrate those that require more time and a slower pace.
Today’s students need a varied approach to learning and the Vretta text and online combination provide that perfectly. The Lessons and Labs can also be catered for specific content so as to meet the needs of every student as each semester changes. Vretta works in close contact with the professors and provide continuous support in a timely manner. With today’s technology, our students have come to expect feedback and answers quickly and the Vretta system exceeds that expectation.
Since the introduction of the text and online material, my students have more confidence when entering the classroom and the marks I see on quizzes and exams have improved significantly. Many of them have expressed to me that they feel like they have their own personal tutor in their home, assisting them as they practice what they learned and complete the lessons and labs. It is also extremely helpful that I can monitor my class’s progress and view individual students as necessary to ensure they are successful in their attempts.
The Vretta textbook and online system has proven to me that there is always room for improvement and with their assistance, I have achieved that for and with my students!
