https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6592-0276
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Abstract
Even prior to COVID-19, there had been an increase in the use of technology in undergraduate mathematics education to support the development of mathematical understanding and skill, and to enhance the student learning environment. Technology-enhanced resources can be used to provide formative assessment which can help students identify gaps in their knowledge and point towards appropriate action. In this paper, we report on the evaluations of a number of technology-enhanced resources that used formative assessment techniques and were provided for students attending non-specialist first-year undergraduate mathematics modules in Ireland. Analysis of the evaluations and consultation with literature identified 12 decisive factors that encourage students’ successful engagement with the resources, covering aspects such as the educational context, affordances and types of technology, technological communication and formative assessment. These factors constitute important knowledge for practitioners as they can use them in the planning, design, and development of technology-enhanced resources for use in their modules. The measures observed during the evaluations indicated both positive and negative engagement providing a link between observations and resultant student engagement, which was found lacking in previous studies on student engagement.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (https://www.teachingandlearning.ie/) who funded the original project, and we also thank the original project team members who, in addition to developing the resources, were also involved at different stages of the evaluations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.