Intelligent tutorial system based on personalized system of instruction to teach or remind mathematical concepts

Abstract

The growth of the higher education population and different school paths to access an academic degree has increased the heterogeneity of students inside the classroom. Consequently, the effectiveness of traditional teaching methods has reduced. This paper describes the design, development, implementation and evaluation of a tutoring system (TS) to improve student's engagement in higher mathematics. The TS design was based on the Personalized System of Instruction of the Mastery Learning pedagogical approach and can be implemented in any higher education course with mathematics needs. The TS consists on small self‐paced modularized units of educational contents, including tutorial videos, notes and formative e‐assessment with personalized feedback. The TS ensures that the student is only allowed to proceed to the next unit after he or she achieves the required mastery criterion of the current unit. The TS was implemented in the Quantitative Methods course of an undergraduate degree and received good acceptance from students. It was also recognized that TS contributed to learning and engagement with the discipline. Through an experimental research experience, it has been shown that the imposition of restrictions on the advance to the next level by a mastery criterion leads to a significant improvement in student's engagement and performance.

Effective Use of a Computer Grading System for Teaching Mathematics at a University

“…Researches [16,17] shows that the means of computer knowledge estimation in mathematics, which gives the chance to receive feedback on wrong answers and hints to the solution, are most effective in the education process. Combined with interactive graphic applications and educational animation, these methods lead to the learning results significantly better [4,8] than in regular training.…”

ViDA: A virtual debugging advisor for supporting learning in computer programming courses

“…Their study suggested that students had to do programming exercises by themselves, with the aid of carefully designed course materials and guidance. Moreover, timely feedback is important to guide the students when they work on programming exercises themselves (Moons & De Backer, ; Odekirk‐Hash & Zachary, ; Paiva, Ferreira, & Frade, ; Rae & Samuels, ; Choy et al, ; Wang & Wong, ) and to keep them motivated in learning (Law et al, ). As it is increasingly unrealistic to expect one‐to‐one interactions and tutoring for typically large programming classes, researchers have been building various automated systems to facilitate student learning and to offer timely feedback to students (Gómez‐Albarrán, ; Kelleher & Pausch, ; Odekirk‐Hash & Zachary, ).…”

Analysis of Innovative Approaches in the Class Using Conceptual Maps and Considering the Learning Styles of Students

“…First, it should be noted that there are quite a few commercially available and open source platforms for learning management, such as Moodle, Blackboard or Canvas LMS, as well as software applications that act as intelligent online tutors [4,5,6]. Currently, all these solutions face the challenge of offering learning that is personalized and/or tailored to each student.…”