Study Paths, Riemann Surfaces And Strebel Differentials

Abstract

These pages aim to explain and interpret why the late Mika Seppälä, a conformal geometer, proposed to model student study behaviour using concepts from conformal geometry, such as Riemann surfaces and Strebel differentials. Over many years Mika Seppälä taught online calculus courses to students at Florida State University in the United States, as well as students at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Based on the click log data of his students in both populations, he monitored this course using edge-decorated graphs, which he gradually improved over the years. To enhance this representation even further, he suggested using tools and geometric intuition from Riemann surface theory. He also was inspired by the much-envied Finnish school system. Bringing these two sources of inspiration together resulted in a promising new representation model for course monitoring. Even though the authors have not been directly involved in Mika Seppälä’s courses, being conformal geometers themselves, they attempt to shed some light on his proposed approach.