Using e-assessment to address mathematical misconceptions in engineering students

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.