Unlocking Maths: Teachers Map Student Struggles & XR's Potential

Last July, we organized a two-day workshop under the Gyan Dhara Project at the Department of Design, IIT Guwahati. This wasn't just another academic gathering; it was a deep dive into the real-world challenges faced by mathematics students in Classes 8 and 9 across Assam's Adarsha Vidyalayas. The goal? To identify key learning difficulties and pave the way for cutting-edge, immersive XR-based learning modules that are both pedagogically sound and contextually relevant.

A Collaborative Quest for Clarity

Four experienced mathematics teachers participated in this focused workshop, bringing their diverse classroom experiences to the forefront. The session was facilitated by the GyanDhara content and design team, including Abhishek Manraj, Ritwik Kar, Madhura Patwardhan, Trishala Jain, and Sakshi Nimje.

The workshop followed a structured yet flexible approach:

• Day 1 focused on Class 8 topics, and Day 2 on Class 9.

• Teachers began with an individual chapter prioritization activity, ranking topics based on observed student difficulty from P1 (hardest) to P13 (easiest).

• This was followed by deep-dive group discussions, where they delved into each prioritized chapter. Discussions covered problematic subtopics, the nature of student misconceptions, real classroom examples, and current instructional limitations.

• The entire process was guided by five key questions, ensuring a fine-grained analysis of learning barriers and surfacing meaningful design directions for immersive interventions.

The Heart of the Matter: Where Students Struggle

The discussions revealed deep-seated, recurring patterns in how students engage with and struggle to learn mathematics. These insights provide a diagnostic lens on student difficulties.

Key areas of challenge include:

• Cognitive and Conceptual Gaps:

  • Weak foundations in arithmetic, especially with negative numbers, fractions, and LCM, which impact higher-level topics like factorisation and linear equations.

  • Low retention of formulae and procedures, leading to rote memorisation without true understanding.

  • Lack of visualisation skills in geometry and mensuration, making it hard to relate real-life scenarios to 3D figures or understand spatial transformations.

• Language and Comprehension Barriers:

  • Decoding word problems is a major hurdle, with students often unable to identify "what is given" and "what is to be found".

  • Mismatch of instruction language and local dialects, widening the communication gap in remote regions.

• Pedagogical and Instructional Constraints:

  • Lack of time and pressure to complete the syllabus, often leading teachers to skip conceptual explanations.

  • Absence of teaching aids and kits, forcing teachers to rely on hand drawings or everyday objects for demonstrations.

  • Overdependence on individual teaching, which is time-consuming and unsustainable.

• Affective and Behavioral Patterns:

  • Math anxiety and low confidence, causing students to disengage or give up at the first sign of complexity.

  • Perception of mathematics as a non-scoring subject, especially in rural and resource-constrained settings, reducing motivation.

Cross-cutting themes also emerged, highlighting persistent difficulties in procedural-heavy chapters, graphical and spatial topics (e.g., coordinate geometry, 3D mensuration), symbolic notations (e.g., algebraic expressions), and visual interpretation in geometry.

Top Challenging Chapters Identified

The workshop led to a final list of 10 prioritized chapters for Class 9 and 10 for Class 8. Some of the most challenging topics include:

• Class 8:

  • Mensuration (P1): Most feared due to language, logic, and visualisation gaps in word problems and 3D shapes.

  • Factorisation (P2): Struggles with splitting the middle term and common factors due to weak foundational arithmetic.

  • Algebraic Expressions & Identities (P3): Issues with bracket expansion, sign changes, and combining terms.

• Class 9:

  • Surface Area and Volume (P1): Significant difficulties with slant vs. perpendicular height, 3D visualisation, unit conversions, and complex calculations in word problems.

  • Quadrilaterals (P2): Challenges in identifying embedded triangles, applying congruence theorems, and understanding angle relationships.

  • Circles (P3): Students often misread figures and struggle with terms like 'chord' and 'arc' and proof-based questions.

  • Triangles (P4): Difficulties with congruence rules, symbolic notation, and visualising transformations like rotation and mirroring.

Teachers' Ingenuity and the Power of XR

Despite the challenges, teachers shared a wide spectrum of adaptable and creative classroom practices, such as using everyday objects for demonstrations, chalkboard diagrams, and even intentional mistake-making to trigger critical thinking.

Crucially, the findings from this workshop provide a directional blueprint for XR content development. The teachers' insights pointed to clear opportunities for immersive XR interventions that can significantly enhance both instruction and student comprehension.

Key recommendations for XR modules include:

• Building engaging zones for arithmetic computation of integers, fractions, and variables.

• Including brief refreshers on prerequisite knowledge at the start of each module.

• Implementing triangle transformation activities in VR (rotation, reflection, superposition) to explain congruence.

• Demonstrating real-life applications of formulae, such as painting walls or filling water tanks, to contextualise concepts.

• Providing activities for word problem decoding, guiding students to identify "given" and "to find" elements.

• Allowing students to drag and drop points on a 3D plane to understand coordinate geometry.

• Integrating checkpoint questions with adaptive hints and visual explanations, especially for procedural and proof-based chapters.

• Adding a tap-to-learn glossary with visual animations and voiceovers for key terms.

The Road Ahead

This workshop was a vital step in grounding the GyanDhara mathematics content strategy in the authentic experiences of teachers. The next phase will involve selecting the top 5 high-impact math topics from each grade for XR module development. These topics will be scored against specific VR suitability criteria, ensuring that the selected concepts truly benefit from the unique strengths of virtual reality.

The potential for VR/MR in education is immense, particularly for spatial, movement-based, or arithmetic topics. While concerns around over-immersion and syllabus coverage exist, the consensus points towards selective, well-designed gamified elements with structured feedback and theoretical support to prevent superficial learning.