Support prospect of success in mathematics for first-year students in engineering by early feedback
- Providing students with the necessary mathematical skills is a growing challenge in German engineering degree courses. This is due to manifold mostly pre-university reasons, for example, inadequate or heterogeneous secondary education in Germany. Preparatory courses, a common remedy offered by many universities, often turn out to lack the expected effect. However, implying an early, mandatory test that scans the basic mathematical skills defined as entrance standard, showed positive results, as it detects the individual knowledge gaps of first-year students and motivates them to take action. For this purpose, we coupled the test with detailed, individual feedback and a cluster of affiliated support offers - preparatory to the test as well as attendant to the first year. Being mandatory, the test already pushes more students in our preparatory math courses. Whereas its detailed, individual feedback enables students to choose among the subsequent support offers and to cope with remaining gaps. The support offers range from transitionProviding students with the necessary mathematical skills is a growing challenge in German engineering degree courses. This is due to manifold mostly pre-university reasons, for example, inadequate or heterogeneous secondary education in Germany. Preparatory courses, a common remedy offered by many universities, often turn out to lack the expected effect. However, implying an early, mandatory test that scans the basic mathematical skills defined as entrance standard, showed positive results, as it detects the individual knowledge gaps of first-year students and motivates them to take action. For this purpose, we coupled the test with detailed, individual feedback and a cluster of affiliated support offers - preparatory to the test as well as attendant to the first year. Being mandatory, the test already pushes more students in our preparatory math courses. Whereas its detailed, individual feedback enables students to choose among the subsequent support offers and to cope with remaining gaps. The support offers range from transition workshops, co-learning tutorials, an online exercise platform, video tutorials up to conventional worksheets and consultation hours. This setup of mandatory test, early and detailed feedback and versatile supporting offers, tackling the missing skills, significantly increased the success in the basic mathematics and mathematics dependent modules of our engineering bachelor courses. In the process, this setup generates several additional, statistical outcomes, like a rating of the different German pre-university school systems, which helps to further work on measures dealing with the decreasing skills of beginners.…
Author: | Norbert GrotzORCiD, Susanne Ertel, Martina Müller-AmthorORCiD |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON45650.2020.9125217 |
Identifier: | 978-1-7281-0930-5 OPAC HS OPAC extern |
Identifier: | 2165-9567 OPAC HS OPAC extern |
Parent Title (English): | 2020 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) |
Publisher: | IEEE |
Place of publication: | Porto |
Document Type: | conference proceeding (article) |
Conference: | IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 27-30 April 2020, Porto, Portugal |
Language: | English |
Date of Publication (online): | 2020/06/25 |
Year of first Publication: | 2020 |
Tag: | curriculum; engineering; higher education; math test; mathematics |
Number of pages: | 5 Seiten |
First Page: | 178 |
Last Page: | 182 |
Institutes: | Fakultät Elektrotechnik |
Fakultät Informatik | |
Fakultät Maschinenbau | |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 0 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke / 00 Informatik, Wissen, Systeme |
3 Sozialwissenschaften / 37 Bildung und Erziehung | |
6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 60 Technik | |
Publication Lists: | Ertel, Susanne |
Müller-Amthor, Martina | |
Grotz, Norbert | |
Publication reviewed: | begutachtet |
Release Date: | 2020/11/17 |