A Framework for Automated Formative Assessment in Mathematics Courses

Abstract

In general terms, the aims of formative assessment are to gather and analyze information about the progress of students, with the intention of improving instruction in real time. This can also help teachers to identify those elements that students are struggling with, and therefore to determine where adjustments must be made. There are, however, some issues that must be addressed before this approach can become more widespread. In this research, and with mathematics as our specific scope, we focus on two of these issues: we present a framework to help teachers implement assessment items that are highly dynamic and flexible, but that allows them at the same time to model common misconceptions and to provide suitable feedback. Following this, we carried out an experiment to determine (i) whether the students perceived such feedback to be useful; (ii) whether they actually used it; and ultimately (iii) whether it produced a difference in their performance. To find the answers to these questions, we used an online 'pre-calculus' course with 458 students and collected data directly from those students via both a perception survey and from their interaction with the LMS. Based on these data, we performed several analyses, including process mining and statistical hypothesis tests. The results demonstrated that although many of the students had a positive opinion of the feedback received, it was not always followed. Nevertheless, when it was (or at least when students said it was), the students performed better.

International Comparison of Higher Education Representatives’ and Students’ Attitudes Towards Feedback Learning

“…The reason may be the same, i.e., that schools from foreign countries already have such aspects included in their educational strategies and do not feel such a strong need for up-scaling. These findings and their rationale align with previous international research studies [19], [20], which consistently highlights the positive perception of feedback-based learning by undergraduate students. Students find such feedback useful as it enables the development of competencies.…”

“…Students found this type of feedback valuable as it facilitated their competence development. The significance of feedback in the learning process, as perceived by undergraduate students, was also investigated in another research [20] which aligns with the findings of the aforementioned study [19]. Both studies confirm the crucial role of feedback in the learning process for students.…”

Enseñanza de las matemáticas en ingeniería: características del contexto colombiano

“…Sobre los estudios categorizados dentro de enseñanza de las matemáticas, los propósitos se orientaron a la implementación de recursos digitales como aplicación móviles y JMat para favorecer el aprendizaje de funciones algebraicas y ofrecer herramientas de cálculo (Bacca et al, 2011;Márquez-Díaz & Morales-Espinosa, 2019); la evaluación formativa y procesos de evaluación de los profesores (Moreno & Pineda, 2020;Uzuriaga López & Martínez Acosta, 2016); la implementación de una unidad didáctica para la enseñanza del área bajo la curva (Ballesteros, 2020); la relación matemáticas-fenómenos de ingeniería (Erazo-Estrada et al, 2018); adaptación de juegos como la Batalla Naval (Orozco & Álvarez, 2020); material didáctico para potenciar habilidades mecánico espaciales y asociativas (Rúa-Ramirez et al, 2018;Tristancho-Ortiz et al, 2019); habilidades matemáticas y para destrezas cognitivas tales como conocer, analizar, decidir, modelar y argumentar (Uzuriaga López & Martínez Acosta, 2016); las matemáticas y su imagen negativa en los estudiantes (Uzuriaga-López et al, 2012) y transformaron el programa de un curso de lógica y algoritmia para programas de ingeniería en una institución de educación superior (Viola-Villamizar & Gómez-Forero, 2019). Algunos autores resaltaron el rol del tutor en la enseñanza de las matemáticas apoyándose en didácticas virtuales (Mendoza et al, 2019) y otros, mencionaron dificultades de carácter académico relacionadas con las asignaturas de matemáticas en la formación de los estudiantes de ingeniería (Vásquez-Artunduaga & Gálvez-López, 2011).…”

Automated Class Diagram Assessment using Semantic and Structural Similarities

“…In addition, teacher fatigue can also affect assessment consistency. Automatic assessment is a solution to maintain teacher consistency [25]. Jebli [26] attempted to assess class diagrams by obtaining lexical information from class diagrams using machine learning and ignoring diagram structure.…”