The challenges and opportunities of teaching mathematics online at the higher levels in region 6, Guyana: A pilot study

This study assesses the preference of educators towards teaching mathematics via different environments, and the challenges and opportunities of teaching mathematics online at the upper secondary and tertiary levels in Region 6, Berbice, Guyana. This study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2021. Thirty-five mathematics educators from both secondary and tertiary intuitions across Region 6, Berbice were surveyed. A questionnaire was created via Google forms and distributed online to the participants. The questionnaire was designed with two themes and was based on a 5-point Likert scale. Results showed that educators preferred face to face and blended teaching over online teaching. Many of the educators claimed that the most popular virtual tool used was videos. Many of the educators agreed to facing several challenges in teaching mathematics online. Most of the educators agreed to facing challenges such as difficulty writing mathematical symbols on the screen, switching between multiple screens, viewing and commenting on student’s work, preparing mathematical content for online learning, engaging students in mathematical thinking, constructing higher-order questions, and setting tests with high levels of integrity. The most frequent challenge that educators agreed to was difficulty in engaging students in mathematical thinking online. Many educators agreed that opportunities for improving mathematics education in the online environment exist. A considerable number of educators believe that they are many opportunities for improving mathematics via the online environment such as mathematical software to enhances students' understanding of the concepts and to render mathematical symbols on screen, specialized package on how to teach mathematics in the online environment for mathematics teacher and mathematics education, specialized training on how to construct mathematics questions that test higher order thinking skills and to construct mathematics questions that with high integrity in the online environment.