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Using e-assessment to address mathematical misconceptions in engineering students

Sikurajapathi, Indunil; Henderson, Karen; Gwynllyw, Rhys

Authors

Rhys Gwynllyw Rhys.Gwynllyw@uwe.ac.uk
Associate Professor in Teaching and Learning



Abstract

Students, when answering a mathematical question, may make a mistake in their answer for a variety of reasons. For example, not reading the question properly, making a mistake due to carelessness or due to a mathematical misconception. It is this latter category, which is of particular interest to us in this paper. When such mistakes occur in handwritten work then, in general, the teacher is able to identify the mistake(s) during the marking process and give written detailed feedback on the student’s script. The disadvantage of this approach is the time and effort it takes to mark and to get feedback back to the student. As a result, e-assessment is becoming a standard means of providing formative and summative assessment of mathematical techniques. The research problem that we have identified is how to detect mathematical misconceptions when students answer e-assessment questions incorrectly, and how to improve the feedback provided to the student in such cases. By analyzing students’ rough paper-based workings for an e-examination, we have captured mathematical misconceptions made by first year engineering students. This has enabled us to catalogue common student errors made by students. By amending the e-assessment feedback code, students who make these errors will subsequently benefit from enhanced, tailored feedback, highlighting the mathematical misconception/error made. In addition, detailed guidance on how to improve their knowledge related to the topic will be given. The aim of our work is to improve the e-assessment experience for students as well as addressing and tackling misconceptions in a timely fashion.

Citation

Sikurajapathi, I., Henderson, K., & Gwynllyw, R. (2020). Using e-assessment to address mathematical misconceptions in engineering students. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 10(5), 356-361. https://doi.org/10.18178/ijiet.2020.10.5.1389

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 14, 2019
Publication Date May 1, 2020
Deposit Date Nov 25, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal International Journal of Information and Education Technology
Electronic ISSN 2010-3689
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 10
Issue 5
Pages 356-361
Series ISSN 2010-3689
DOI https://doi.org/10.18178/ijiet.2020.10.5.1389
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/4734621
Publisher URL http://ijiet.org/

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Licence
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).





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