Welcome to Grasple! Grasple is a Social Enterprise all about helping students learn math and statistics. This article helps you explore Grasple and show you how you as a teacher can use Grasple to help your students Grasp the topics they Grapple with.
This article is a good starting point, but only shows the first steps of what Grasple can do for you. If you want to know more, feel free to try things out for yourselves and don't hesitate to reach out with any questions by using the chat icon in the bottom of the screen.
How to start exploring or using Grasple?
Step 1: Start with Ready-to-Use Courses
Explore our library of pre-built courses to quickly get started.
These courses are designed to be implemented immediately with minimal setup.
Step 2: Need Something Tailored?
If the pre-built options don’t meet your needs, reach out to us for a course matchmaking request. We’ll help you find or create a course that fits perfectly!
Step 3: Go Hands-On – Create Your First Exercise
Scenario 1: Learn by doing! Create your first math exercise, experiment with interactive features, and explore the intuitive course-building tools Grasple offers.
This streamlined approach ensures you’re up and running in minutes while providing flexibility for customized solutions.
There are multiple ways to use Grasple. To help you explore how Grasple can potentially be used in your education, we have outlined 3 scenarios which you can go through to get a better understanding on how Grasple works and what it does.
Scenario 1: Create a first math exercise and interact with it
You have created a Grasple Teacher Account and now you want to create your first exercise to see how this could help your students practice math and statistics. In this scenario we will help you create your first exercise to get a feel on how Grasple works and how it helps your students practice with immediate (personalised) feedback.
With the following steps you will create a simple math exercise:
Go to your personal repository by clicking the ‘Repositories’ button in the top right corner and click on your personal repository. If you don't have one, you can create one by clicking the "add repository" button and naming your repository.
Click on the ‘Exercises’ tab and click on the ‘+ new exercise’ button.
You are now on the create page for a Grasple exercise. Choose the "Math / Equation" type to create a math exercise. Read more about the 4 answer types in this help article.
You can type your question by clicking one of the two boxes and just start typing. You can also easily add mathematical expressions in your question text by using the plus icon on the right and clicking the "Sum sign" or use the shortcut Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+E when typing. In a math box you can type Latex directly or use the menu to insert the math symbols.
There are more editing options for you to explore in the future: you can also add images and graphs
Type the correct answer in the answer box. For numeric and mathematical answers you can just type Latex (e.g. a command can be written as well and executed with a space). If you don't know LaTeX, you can use the menu surrounding the answer box to insert the math expression.
Provide a detailed solution and question at a wrong answer. This is the feedback which will be shown to students if they would interact with the exercise. If they answer the question incorrectly they will be shown the ‘Question at wrong answer’ and if they answer the question correctly they will be shown the ‘Detailed solution’.
Now click the "preview" button in the top corner and you will see how the exercise will be presented to a student (in a preview mode). You can now answer the question you just created by filling in an answer in the answer box and clicking "Check my answer" button. For example if the correct answer is "2x", answer with "x+x" and see that it is also marked as correct by default (note: you can specify more strict checks if you want to by using different check methods)”.
You can click "edit" again to further edit your exercise and add more feedback or other options. For example by adding specific answer feedback to your exercise to provide your students with specific feedback based on the contents of their answer. Read more about how to add specific answer feedback here.
After following the steps above you could have a basic mathematics question that could look something like this:
These steps illustrate the basics of creating an exercise in Grasple. There are a lot more awesome features that you can use to make your exercises even better!
Add sub-questions to your exercises
Now that you have created an exercise there are two things you can do with your exercise:
Use the exercise in a (new) subject
Use the exercise in a (new) test
The steps necessary to do this are similar for both subjects and tests. You can read more about how to link exercises to a subject or a test here.
Scenario 2: Use a "Ready to use Course" and adapt it to your course structure
Do you want to enrich your course with more interactive learning for your students based upon trusted high quality learning materials, but don't have the time to completely create your own course from scratch?
That is exactly why we have "Ready to use Courses" available in Grasple. These are courses based upon renowned openly published learning materials and courses, already used by many teachers and students to teacher and learn. If you want to learn more about Ready to use Courses, read this help article.
To get started exploring this option, you can take the following steps to quickly create a course and adapt the structure to your method of teaching.
In your course overview screen, click on the blue ‘+ create a new course’ button in the top of your screen.
Enter a course name in the corresponding text box. (you can always change this later again if you want to)
To use a "Ready to use course", click on ‘Ready to use Course’ and select the specific course topic.
These courses contain a selection of curated openly licensed education resources. You can read more about Ready to use Courses here.
Optional: the start and end date are optional and can be left empty for now. They are used in case you need support for using the course in your education.
Click on ‘Create Course’.
You have now created your very first personal course based on Read to use Course structure and content, well done!
Now that you have created your first course, there is a good possibility that you want to personalise it to best fit your own teaching.
This is also possible with Grasple! Open content allows you to organise and personalise content in the way which best fits your course and at Grasple we believe the teacher should be in control of their own course materials, but still be able to leverage the benefits of open content.
You can start personalising your course right away, since you are in the course edit page. If you ever want to get back to the edit page, you can just click the edit button in the top right corner if you are on your course page.
There are multiple ways to personalise your course modules:
How do you make these changes?
Change the module name
Click on the name of the module located in the text box above the subjects
Change the name of the module to a name of your liking
Save the changed module name by clicking on the ‘save’ or ‘save & preview’ buttons
Change the order of subjects (within and between modules)
Simply drag the subject to the desired location
Save the changed module order by clicking on the ‘save’ or ‘save & preview’ buttons
Remove subjects from a module
Click on the ‘edit’ button in the top of your course overview screen
Determine which subject(s) you want to remove from the module
Click on the trash can icon next to the subject(s) you want to remove
Made a mistake? You can undo the deletion of the subject by clicking on the undo button. Just make sure not to click save first
Save the changed module contents by clicking on the ‘save’ or ‘save & preview’ buttons
Create an automatically generated test
Do you want to dynamically test your students based on the subjects in a module? You can do so by creating an automatic test in just a few steps!
Click on the ‘edit’ button in the top of your course overview screen
Make sure all the subjects you want to be in the test are located in the same module
Click on the ‘Add Test’ button at the bottom of the module
You will be given the choice between creating an automatic or a manual test. In this case, click on ‘Automatic’
The test has been added to the bottom of the module. Now save the module with the added test by clicking on the ‘save’ or ‘save & preview’ buttons
After saving the course you can edit the test settings by clicking on the test in preview mode and clicking on the ‘Edit’ button at the top of the screen. By default automatic tests have 10 questions, however this can be changed. To read more about how to change the test settings have a look at this help article.
Many other possibilities
Besides the mentioned possibilities to personalise your course there are a lot more possibilities within Grasple to tailor your course to your own and your students’ needs.
Create your own exercises and lessons and add them to your course
Create manual tests compiled of hand-selected exercises
Scenario 3: You want to discover the highlights and top features of Grasple
This section of the quick start article shortly introduces Grasple's highlights and most prominent features. If any of these specific features spark your interest you can read more in depth about them in the linked help articles.
What to try them out on the platform? We created example exercises for each feature modifying this base question to include the highlighted feature (links in the according description).
Math editor
Want to add another dimension to your math and statistics lessons and exercises? In Grasple you can easily add formulas and mathematical symbols to your lessons and exercises. To ease the process of editing your math exercises, Grasple has developed a very easy way to insert mathematical formulas and equations.
You can add math boxes everywhere, you can type and create math expressions by just typing LaTeX in those boxes or by using the insert menu surrounding the math box. The easiest way to add a math box is by pressing "Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+E" on your keyboard.
Want to learn more about how to add mathematical symbols and formulas to your lessons and exercises? Have a look at this help article and here for more tips and tricks.
Specific feedback
Help your students better understand their mistakes and learn from them by providing specific feedback in an exercise. With the ability to add additional answers with feedback per answer, you can guide your students towards the correct solution and help them avoid common misconceptions.
Grasple provides automatic feedback based on the characteristics of the student's answer, helping to correct any misunderstandings they may have. With custom-made answer checks and the ability to add answer-dependent variables in feedback, you can tailor your exercises to meet the needs of your students and provide them with the most effective feedback possible. Example Exercise: Specific Feedback.
Learn more on the integration of specific feedback in this article (link)
Adaptive questions (using a decision tree)
Create adaptive exercises that give interactive feedback to students based on their answers, rather than just static feedback. By setting up a decision tree logic, specific sub-questions can be shown based on a student's answer, providing extra help questions when needed or skipping sub-questions if the student answers the first question correctly. This adaptive way of learning is a great didactic tool for personalizing each exercise based on the answers of that specific student, allowing you as an educator to guide them in the right direction without having to sit next to them. Grasple's decision tree exercises provide a powerful and interactive learning experience that can help students gain a deeper understanding of complex math and statistics concepts. Example Exercise: Adaptive Questions.
Learn how to apply conditional logic in your questions and exercises in this article (link).
To explore further features related to adaptive learning with decision tree logic follow this link.
Parameterised exercises
This feature allows educators and content creators to create dynamic math and statistics exercises that can be customized and adapted. With parameterization, certain operators of the exercise (see list here) will be replaced with variables or parameters. Each time a student views the same exercise our program will randomly select new values to fill these parameters, making the exercises more challenging and engaging. This means that you as the teacher only have to create the exercise once and are still providing your students with endless practice opportunities. This enables learners to explore different scenarios and to develop a deeper understanding of the underlying mathematical concepts in a fun and interactive way. Example Exercise: Parameterization.
Learn more about the possibilities of parameters in an exercise in this article (link)
Draft + publish using version Control
Grasple's version control feature is an excellent option for teachers who want full control over their exercises without worrying about interrupting student progress. This feature allows you to create drafts of your exercise, which can be saved and edited without being visible to students. When you're done updating your exercise, you can publish your exercise and the new version will become visible for your students. With version control, you can be confident that changes won't affect students who have already interacted with a certain subject, giving you complete control over your content.
Grasple also keeps track of all changes made to an exercise, making it easy to view previous versions and collaborate with other teachers. Example Exercise: Version Control.
Read more here about draft+publish, exercise versions and viewing changes between versions.
What are courses and what are repositories?
Grasple is a practice and assessment platform for open mathematics and statistics materials. Within Grasple you have Courses and Repositories, which have different goals:
Courses - Here you can share materials with your students in a structured way for them to learn subjects and practice by answering exercises and getting immediate feedback Courses are structured with modules and each module can contain subjects (including practice exercises) and/or automatic and manual tests to your course.
Repositories - Here you can manage the content that you want to use within the courses. You can create, edit and share (with your colleagues) subjects, exercises and tests via repositories. You don’t need to create your own content, because you automatically have access to the community repositories, which contain curated subjects (including exercises) for you to use within your courses and/or tests.
To get a quick overview of Grasple’s basic structure have a look at the video below.
To learn more about Grasple, you can use the help center and the links provided in this quick start guide.
Are you lost or have questions?
If you are lost, have questions or want to know if Grasple can be used in a different way, please reach out to us. We are happy to help :).
Reach out to us via the blue chat icon or hello@grasple.com!