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.
Lay Description
What is already known about this topic?
- The Information and Communication Technologies have a great potential for any individualized math teaching program.
- There are advantages of the implementation of the Personalized System of Instruction pedagogy in higher mathematics.
- The tutorial systems may improve student's engagement and performance.
- The transcription of paper‐based mathematics examinations into an electronic format is feasible for a significant proportion of the questions as currently assessed.
What this paper adds:
- The use of an online tutorial system with design based on the Personalized System of Instruction leads to a significant improvement in student's engagement and performance.
- Using e‐assessments with formative feedback is feasible as self‐assessment tool.
- The positive effects in student's engagement and performance are boosted by the imposition of mandatory mastery criteria on the advance to the next level.
Implications for practice and/?or policy:
- Efforts should be made to make the tutorial systems of mathematics more attractive.
- The implementation of online exercises in which the number of fields is defined by the student may provide an important improvement in the interaction for some types of questions.
Number of times cited: 2
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- Giovannina Albano and Umberto Dello Iacono, GeoGebra in e-learning environments: a possible integration in mathematics and beyond, Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 10.1007/s12652-018-1111-x, (2018).
