Numeracy students' perspectives on a new digital learning tool at a South African university

Abstract

Students thrive in learning environments where they are able to remain engaged, interested and motivated. A new digital learning tool, MindTap Math Foundations, claims to transform learning by bringing elements from the interactive, gamified world so that students stay engaged, persist through challenges, feel more supported and connected with instructors, other students and their own learning experience. A South African university was the first higher education institution in South Africa to make use of this personalised learning system. A survey was employed to assess the effectiveness of MindTap Math Foundations as a digital learning tool. The focus of the article is on the analysis of the open-ended questions in the survey. The findings of this research support the claims Cengage make regarding the platform's benefits. Participants' responses revealed that the new digital learning tool is generally perceived as positive and beneficial for learning numeracy. Students' feedback also provided ideas and proposals for potential enhancement. Through students' experiences shared it was possible to pinpoint the strengths and challenges regarding aspects needing consideration and improvement.

Influence of game-based learning in mathematics education on the students' cognitive and affective domain: A systematic review

“…Twenty nations were involved in 28 articles. Six United States articles (Hulse et al, 2019 ; Ke, 2019 ; Moon and Ke, 2020 ; Ramani et al, 2020 ; Scalise et al, 2020 ; Thai et al, 2022 ), two articles from Spain (Jiménez et al, 2020 ; Zabala-Vargas et al, 2021 ), two articles from Greece (Altanis et al, 2018 ; Malliakas et al, 2021 ), two articles from South Africa (Delport, 2019 ; van Putten et al, 2020 ), and two articles from Taiwan (Yeh et al, 2019 ; Liu et al, 2021 ) were included. There was one article each from Australia (Vanbecelaere et al, 2020 ), China (Deng et al, 2020 ), Croatia (Juric et al, 2021 ), Finland (Kärki et al, 2021 ), Germany (Kiili et al, 2018 ), Hong Kong (Ting et al, 2019 ), Indonesia (Suryani et al, 2019 ), Ireland (Rocha and Dondio, 2021 ), Jordan (Al Khateeb, 2019 ; Baek and and Touati, 2020 ), Morocco (Tazouti et al, 2019 ), Portugal (Barros et al, 2020 ), Sweden (Alkhede and Holmqvist, 2021 ), and Turkey (Ilhan, 2021 ).…”

“…In terms of publishing year, two articles were published in 2018 (Altanis et al, 2018 ; Kiili et al, 2018 ). In 2019, nine articles were published (Al Khateeb, 2019 ; Delport, 2019 ; Hulse et al, 2019 ; Ke, 2019 ; Suryani et al, 2019 ; Tazouti et al, 2019 ; Ting et al, 2019 ; Yeh et al, 2019 ; Rocha and Dondio, 2021 ). Subsequently, there were eight publications in 2020 (Baek and and Touati, 2020 ; Barros et al, 2020 ; Deng et al, 2020 ; Jiménez et al, 2020 ; Moon and Ke, 2020 ; Scalise et al, 2020 ; Vanbecelaere et al, 2020 ; Juric et al, 2021 ).…”

“…There were three sorts of research method used: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed. As shown in Figure 4, there were 20 quantitative studies where 72% specifically used a quantitative approach (Kiili et al, 2018;Al Khateeb, 2019;Delport, 2019;Hulse et al, 2019;Suryani et al, 2019;Tazouti et al, 2019; . /fpsyg.…”

“…There were 23 studies (82%) using digital game-based learning (Altanis et al, 2018;Kiili et al, 2018;Al Khateeb, 2019;Delport, 2019;Hulse et al, 2019;Ke, 2019;Tazouti et al, 2019;Ting et al,…”

Implicaciones de la gamificación en Educación Superior: una revisión sistemática sobre la percepción del estudiante

“…En cuanto a las implicaciones de este tipo de prácticas innovadoras en la Educación Superior, cabe establecer una triple clasificación según su naturaleza: ámbito cognitivo (Aynsley et al, 2018;Barreal & Jannes, 2019;De los Ríos et al, 2019;Felszeghy et al 2019;Jong et al, 2018;Tan, 2018;Tóth et al 2019;Zvarych et al, 2019), dimensión procedimental (Barrel & Jannes, 2019;De los Ríos et al, 2019;Delport, 2019;Felszeghy et al, 2019: Glowacki et al, 2018Grivokostopoulou et al, 2019: Pérez & Rivera, 2017 y actitudinal (Głowacki et al, 2018;Grivokostopoulou et al, 2019;Kapralova et al, 2019;López et al, 2019;Pettit et al, 2015;Santos et al, 2018).…”