Marta Kowalczyk and Kevin Mark from La Guardia Community College, City University of New York, presented at Open Ed 2021 a session entitled “MyOpenMath (MOM) Platform for General Chemistry homework assignments.” I did not know about the MyOpenMath platform. Kowalczyk and Mark teach chemistry with MOM. Kowalczyk described MOM as a “free, open-source, online course management system for quantitative fields” that includes support for faculty and connections with other OER textbooks and resources such as Wiki and YouTube. The system can be set up for automated grading and randomized questions… and even exams. It seems to have integration with Blackboard, and I wonder if it works with Moodle? Mark mentioned it takes a couple of days to gain instructor access. Kowalczyk demonstrated how you can create a course in MOM or copy from a previous course. I wonder what the templates that are available include? The ones they mentioned were for AP Chemistry and Lumen learning. You can also create discussion forums and spaces for collaborative text editing. I wonder how that works! There was a set of icons for discussion questions to prompt users about the resources available. If students have trouble answering a question, Mark, demonstrated how students can get hints and links to an OER. The Faculty Support Forum on MOM has searchable question databases and documentation for MOM is searchable. Mark described some of the challenges of using MOM were: the need to understand some HTML, no hints/feedback for students, and no student support. Nevertheless, Mark and Kowalczyk found HTML support in the faculty forum, created feedback and added links to resources, and assigned faculty to help students and other instructors with technical issues. Mark and Kowalczyk were funded by a CUNY Open Educational Resources Grant to create workshops and troubleshoot to expand to more sections. MyOpenMath reduced student expenses according to the presenters by $44 per student per semester for general chemistry. They estimate that for eighty sections and eight courses they saved about $230,000! While I am not sure how and if I need to use MOM for the courses I am involved with, it is good to know that this resource exists.
