(Canyon)—More than 40 percent of traffic on the West Texas A&M University server in 2006 was prompted by one web address, that of the Virtual Math Lab. The lab offers tutorials in beginning, intermediate and college algebra. It also has study sessions for the math portion of the ACCUPLACER, THEA and GRE tests.
Kim Peppard (standing) developed the site in 2001 to help students who couldn’t attend tutoring sessions on campus.
Hailed by the Public Broadcasting Service and recommended by a recipient of the Nobel Prize for physics, the free online tutorial site was visited 1,883,851 times last year by people from all over the world, including some at Yale University.
Returning and non-traditional students of business often find that their math skills are a bit rusty, according to Randy Johnson, executive director of Yale’s Leadership in Healthcare MBA for Executives program. He not only discovered WTAMU’s Virtual Math Lab online and began recommending it to his students, he also hired Kim Peppard, designer of the WTAMU website, to create college algebra tests with step-by-step answer keys to further help students in his program.
“Mr. Johnson said the students in his program are executives who have been in the workforce and were returning to school but needed help re-learning algebra,” Peppard said. “He was very impressed by the Virtual Math Lab because it can help both traditional and non-traditional students hone their skills.”
Yale is not the first to laud the virtual lab. In 2003, the Public Broadcasting Service recommended the lab as the foremost link to beginning algebra tutorials online. And in 2005, Dr. Gerard ’t Hooft of the Netherlands, winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for physics, began directing readers of his website to the Virtual Math Lab.
In fact, more than 1,500 external websites have linked to the lab. That comes as no surprise to WTAMU President J. Patrick O’Brien, who was aware of the website’s value even before assuming the presidency in May.
“I recommended the West Texas A&M Math Lab to students transferring into Loyola’s business school long before I moved to Texas,” said O’Brien, who was dean of the College of Business at Loyola University in New Orleans prior to taking the reins at WTAMU. “It is an exceptional resource.”
Folks have visited the site from Australia to Zimbabwe and, of course, Yale.
“We get email thank-you messages from all over the world, so we know the lab is helping a lot of people,” Peppard said. “It’s an honor to be recognized as a recommended reference and tutorial, and it steers a lot of students to the assistance they need, here at home and around the world.”
Peppard took it upon herself to develop the virtual math lab in 2001, when she was an instructor of mathematics at WTAMU. She has since become a retention specialist in the university’s Office of Enrollment Management, but she still maintains the lab and presently is working on a project intended to make the site even more user friendly.
The idea grew out of Peppard’s desire to assist students who wanted help but couldn’t make time to attend tutoring sessions on campus.
“I had taken instructional design courses for the Internet, and I had taught online classes,” she said. “I knew I could create online tutorials, and I did it with the curriculum for each respective class in mind.
“It gave our students in beginning, intermediate or college algebra classes free and around-the-clock help specifically geared toward the classes they were taking. Now it has been used by learners all over the world for all kinds of reasons.” 