After the pandemic pushed the BYU–Hawaii Math Learning Center online to better cater to students, employees said they are working on improving their systems to meet time zone differences and online learning and to help students who said they are experiencing difficulties with the transition.
“The Math Learning Center is an inviting and helpful place for students and community members of all math backgrounds to get the necessary help they need to further grow their math knowledge,” said Melissa Nguyen Lumogdang, a professor in the Faculty of Math & Computing. Students can request assistance through the Microsoft team page or directly through the center’s Facebook page.
Lumogdang assisted Vanessa Tandiman, the Math Lab coordinator, as a coordinator for the Spring 2020 Semester. Originally, the center was only in-person, but quickly had to transition to remote at the beginning of the pandemic, Tandiman said.
“Before COVID-19 we operated only face to face. … But when COVID-19 happened and students had to leave campus, we knew that we had to find an online platform,” she said. At the time, she was not the coordinator, but she was assigned to the position not long after the program began the shift online, she added.
Camilla Peterson, a freshman living in the United Arab Emirates and majoring in political science, said, “I heard about the Math Center … the first week of school in an email from our teacher.” After multiple unsuccessful attempts to meet with tutors, Peterson said she has grown frustrated with the different time discrepancies between tutors and students.
“If students ask for help outside of the open hours, tutors will respond when the MLC opens again,” Lumogdang said.
For students outside of Hawaii, this response time makes the center a harder resource to utilize, Peterson said. “I tried using it. However, because of the time difference and the time limit on the math assignments, I can’t use it that much or I can’t get my assignments done on time,” she said. Tandiman explained coordinating time zone differences was one of the bigger questions they had for this semester.
“I actually mapped the top ten countries where most of our international students are from,” she said. “We try to announce the hours early. ... I wish we could cater to everyone. We’re trying, but I am actually very sorry,” she added. “With limited tutors and hundreds of international students, the center is doing its best to be accessible to as many students as possible.” She acknowledged not all students will be able to access this resource.
Tandiman explained the center lost a majority of their tutors when international students had to go home. They are currently hiring as many tutors as they can, she said, but they are still operating at a very low capacity.
“[The program] is not perfect yet. It’s not as well set up as you would expect from a professional, but one thing we had in mind was a way to manage the help requests,” Tandiman said. “I know we can’t cater to everyone, but we try,” she added. The team was able to utilize a resource that had always been available to students through their Microsoft accounts, but had never been accessed by the University.
The center is utilizing the Microsoft Teams program in an attempt to tutor all the students who are trying to learn from home. The application allows students to post questions, request help and attend review sessions for chapter tests, she explained. Tandiman added the center also teamed up with the Computer Science Department to help control the number of requests coming in.
“They [had] figured out a way to manage those type of online requests. … Over the summer break, they helped set one up for us so we now have a platform other than the Microsoft Teams,” she said. The students are directed to a digital form they then fill out and submit, she added, making the requests more manageable for their small team.
As coordinator, Tandiman said she is already planning improvements for the coming semesters. Through weekly meetings with tutors and professors, she hopes the Math Learning Center will continue to be a trusted resource for students.
The Math Learning Center hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. HST, Mondays-Fridays. The links to the forms and Microsoft Teams can be found at https://mc.byuh.edu/math-learning-center.