Expii Inc.

Every Spring, Po-Shen Loh leads professional development workshops in New York City for K-12 math and science teachers associated with Math for America. In 2018, he developed three workshops, where he led group discussions with original content based on his personal research and discoveries. Describing his goals for the 2018 workshops, Loh explained, “My objective was to show ways to introduce concepts from Calculus into middle school math, while being fully understandable and explaining everything in basic mathematical language.” Loh inspires his students and fellow educators with his unique perspectives on mathematical concepts and how to learn and teach them. He thrives when he is tackling the challenge of making learning approachable and applicable to any learner he encounters.

Expii was recently featured in profile article for a local publication, TEQ Magazine, which was published April 2019. Here’s an excerpt from the article:Po-Shen Loh describes Expii’s mission as, “Providing accessible learning to the world and changing how students perceive education.” Expii envisions a world where all learners are able to access math and science.To the team, access has many layers: access to resources, positive feedback, understandable language, and personalized progression. They strive to communicate empathy for their learners’ challenges and celebrate their successes. Their goal is to give every learner, educator, and enthusiast a platform where they can be themselves, and contribute their voices and perspectives. They want every user to find their own “aha moment.”

Po-Shen Loh was recently interviewed on Pittsburgh Technology Council’s radio show, TechVibe Radio. Originally broadcast on KDKA 1020 AM, the show is now available on PGHTech Fuse’s site. As the second guest featured on the show, Loh explains how Expii revolutionizes the way that students can learn math and science. During the interview, Loh talks about the origin of Expii and how learners access math and science content on our website.

At Expii, we keep these values at the heart of everything that we develop:  Individuality; Neither educators nor students should ever box themselves in. Differences are what make each person interesting; they help us grow, teach us new things, and when we work together, we create something amazing. Logic; Reason is one of the most important skills that anyone can have. It is what we all use to think critically to solve math and life problems. Expii’s way of approaching education fosters logic and problem-solving skills before a student even selects what he or she wants to learn.  Challenging Perceptions; We know there isn’t just one definition of smart. We are expanding what smart feels like, looks like, and sounds like. We are expanding what smart is. Knowledge; We’ve all heard that knowledge is power. And it is, we swear, it really is! We are giving everyone everywhere equal access to education. Real Voices; We believe that students can learn from their friends, teachers can learn from their students, and anyone can become a role model. Learning should speak to everyone in a voice with which they identify and understand. The Aha Moment; This is why we do what we do. We want every student to experience the moment when something that took a lot of work to understand finally makes complete and total sense.

Our Educational Content team meets biweekly for professional development workshops. Dani Derringer Zhang, our Curriculum Designer, brings her background in teaching high school math to leading her team. Her workshops focus on incorporating sound educational theory into Expii’s lesson and explanations. Among the schools of thought included in Expii’s foundation and development as well as these workshops are:Carol Dweck’s work on GritHoward Gardner’s work on Multiple IntelligencesBenjamin Bloom’s work on Taxonomy of Educational ObjectivesLev Vygotsky’s work on Zone of Proximal DevelopmentDavis Kolb’s work on Experiential Learning Cycle

Over the last year, Expii has given over 200,000 learners access to personalized math and science education that speaks to them as individuals. We asked a few to tell us exactly why Expii works for them and why they keep using it."If there is only one way to learn something, it's 50/50; Pass or fail. But if there are more ways to do it, there are more ways to get it." - Luis, High School Student, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Pittsburgh, PA“I've been using Expii ever since the first few years of its release, and it's been a constant source of engaging content throughout the fields of the sciences and mathematics, as well as a community of enthusiastic and driven students. Expii engages me and encourages me to explore topics I would never have otherwise encountered. As a past editor for Wikipedia, I also love contributing knowledge and content and helping other students gain the same degree of excitement for learning that I've been able to gain through my participation in Expii.” - Sharon, High School Student, Stuyvesant High School, New York, NY “As a student yearning to explore math more deeply than the rote memorization encouraged by several of my classes, I'm always excited to participate in new learning systems for math.” - Titus, High School Student, Coronado High School, Colorado Springs, CO"I first joined this site back before Expii Solve was released. Back then, I had always felt a bit disappointed in myself for not being able to contribute to the topic map due to a worry of not being knowledgeable enough. I finally convinced my school to hold the AMC 12 in 11th grade, whereupon I had performed about average. During my preparation, I did mostly past problems. Because I'm a low-income student, buying books, like those from the Art of Problem Solving, was not entirely feasible for me, and my local libraries did not have them either. Costs for participating in interesting events or preparing for standardized testing has always been a problem for me in my situation. Math and science are my favorite subjects, and they will become more important as the world becomes more technologically advanced. Nevertheless, I don't see as many useful resources as I would hope. I'm excited for the future as I see more knowledge becoming free due to the Internet with its online courses and its open textbooks." - Yuchen, High School Student, South Fayette High School, McDonald, Pennsylvania“I see it as a great way to contribute back to a revolutionary community of learners and doers. The goal of Expii lines up with my own life motto of helping others learn and succeed in order to build a better tomorrow. Expii is the vehicle to bring learning everywhere.” - Jerry, High School Student, Marquette High School, Chesterfield, Missouri“I am passionate about mathematics. But there doesn't exist much opportunity in our country to spread the beauty of math & science. Expii is a platform for the students who are passionate about math & science but don't get the proper chances to learn math & science. We know, present world hugely depends on the theories of math & science. But the developing countries are not so much advanced in these sectors. As a result they lag behind. We know, students are the future leaders of a nation. I think Expii will be effective for our students in learning math & science.” - Rabiah, High School Student, Govt. Model Girls' High School, Brahmanbaria, Bangladesh“I have always been very passionate about improving education through technology. I thoroughly believe that every student should have taken a chance in science, mathematics, and/or technology - but the current American education has not presented these topics in an attractive or interesting way to most students. Strong online educational platforms really have the potential to impact students positively. Over the past 2 years, I have used Expii frequently, for multiple purposes. I have used Expii to further my education in advanced mathematics topics, such as infinite descent. I have published 155 revisions on Expii, which consists of concept explanations, exercises, and solutions; I’ve also been an active member of girls@expii since its founding.” - Catherine, High School Student, Stanford Online High School, San Jose, CA

At Expii we design our features and experience for high school students. Naturally, interacting with and learning from high school students is integral to the quality of our product. We host user testing sessions each week that provide opportunities for students to engage with Expii on a professional and impactful level. Students give direct feedback on site design, efficacy, ease of use, navigation, and content.Expii also offers development workshops for students such as: Principles of Design and Your Resume and Building Your Personal Brand. We believe that these will give students exposure to career tracks in the field of technology and a boost on job materials.One local Pittsburgh organization, Neighborhood Learning Alliance, has partnered with Expii to give its students access to these workshops. The Neighborhood Learning Alliance employs high school students as literacy and STEM tutors, who provided professional development opportunities each week. For more highlights from this partnership, see our video.

As every person has a unique way of learning, he or she also has a unique way of teaching. Expii allows for crowdsourced lessons to empower peer-to-peer learning. This feature organically adapts Expii to their specific learning needs. Each submitted lesson is reviewed by subject matter experts before it goes live on the site, but we believe that these crowdsourced lessons will introduce new voices in teaching and redefining education.Expii’s content has been developed by a team of college students who have set the bar for crowdsourced content from students, parents, and teachers all over the world.

Jenny Shawley, Math Department Chair at Derry High School, uses Expii in her Algebra classrooms for unit review. When asked about how Expii benefits her students, she explained, “I find the best problems for the unit and send the corresponding links to my students. They have to complete a minimum of ten practice problems with 70% accuracy to pass the assignment.”Shawley described her delight with Expii, saying, “ This has been a great way to review topics. My students choose Expii over other web-based platforms because of the variety of content on each topic.”