Search

Ensuring equity in education is a goal for sustainable development. Among the factors that hinder equity, socioeconomic status (SES) has the highest impact on learning Mathematics. This paper addresses the issue of equity at the secondary school level by proposing an approach based on adopting automatic formative assessment (AFA). Carefully designed mathematical activities with interactive feedback were experimented with a sample of 299 students of grade 8 for a school year. A control group of 257 students learned the same topics using traditional methodologies. Part of the sample belonged to low SES. The learning achievement was assessed through pre-and post-tests to understand if the adoption of AFA impacted learning and whether the results depended on the students’ SES. The results show a positive effect of the experimentation (effect size: 0.42). Moreover, the effect size of the experimentation restricted to the low-SES group is high (0.77). In the treatment group, the results do not depend on SES, while in the control group, they do, suggesting that AFA is an equitable approach while traditional instruction risks perpetuating inequalities.

The teaching of algebra at the secondary school level has faced a great revolution during the last 50 years. While previously, it was focused on technicisms and pure syntactic rules, the most modern trends recommend using a functional approach to algebra and giving more prominence to conversions among different representation registers than treatments as simplifications and expansions. Nowadays, the daily practice in teaching algebra is still influenced by the traditional approach, and there is a need to offer teachers examples of activities that can give meaning to algebraic computations. This study proposes a set of interactive activities for eighth grade students, with a functional approach to formulas in a geometric context. The goal of the study is to investigate how similar activities can help students to develop multiple approaches to problems, understand algebraic formulas, and discern which main problems they face. The activities were tested with about 300 students, and qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed to answer the research questions.

This paper is focused on understanding if the use of interactive activities based on problem solving and automatic formative assessment in a blended learning environment can promote the development of engagement in Mathematics for students of grade 8. In this context, engagement is characterized as a multidimensional construct composed of an emotional component, a cognitive component and a behavioral one. The discussion is based on the results of a didactic experimentation conducted with 299 students of grade 8 who, during one entire school year, had access to an online platform rich in interactive learning materials used in blended modality. Through an initial and a final questionnaire, evolutions in their engagement levels were measured. We found that the initially most disengaged students and those coming from lowest social classes are those who mainly benefitted of the interactive activities in order to improve their engagement levels.

Self-assessment, in the education framework, is a methodology that motivates students to play an active role in reviewing their performance. It is defined as “the evaluation or judgment of ‘the worth’ of one’s performance and the identification of one’s strengths and weaknesses with a view to improving one’s learning outcomes”. The goal of this research is to study the relationship between self-assessment and the development and improvement of problem-solving skills in Mathematics. In particular, the investigation focuses on how accurate the students’ self-evaluations are when compared to external ones, and if (and how) the accuracy in self-assessment changed among the various processes involved in the problem-solving activity. Participants are grade 11 students (in all 182 participants) in school year 2020/2021 who were asked to solve 8 real-world mathematical problems using an Advanced Computing Environment (ACE). Each problem was assessed by a tutor and self-assessed by students themselves, according to a shared rubric with five indicators: Comprehension of the problematic situation, identification of the solving strategy, development of the solving process, argumentation of the chosen strategy, and appropriate and effective use of the ACE. Through a quantitative analysis, students’ self-assessment and tutors’ assessment were compared; data were cross-checked with students’ answers to a questionnaire. The results show a general correlation between tutor assessment and self-assessment, with a tendency of students to underestimate their performance. Moreover, students were more precise in self-assessing in the indicators: Development of the solving process and use of the ACE, while they had major difficulties in self-assessment for the indicators: Comprehension of the problematic situation and argumentation.

In digital education, learning analytics should support active monitoring and dynamic decision-making during learning processes; they are mainly based on digital assessment, through which it is possible to collect and elaborate data about students’ progresses. In this paper we start from Black and Wiliam’s theoretical framework on formative assessment, which identified 5 key strategies that 3 agents (student, peers and teacher) pursue when enacting formative practices in a context of traditional learning, and we integrate it in a framework of innovative didactics. In particular, we consider the use of a Digital Learning Environment integrated with an Automatic Assessment System based on the engine of an Advanced Computing Environment to build interactive materials with automatic assessment according to a specific model of formative assessment. In this framework, rooted in activity theory, the Digital Learning Environment plays the role of mediating artifact in the activity of enacting the strategies of formative assessment. Though several examples of application of automatic formative assessment in several contexts and modalities, we show how it is possible to use the data gathered through the Digital Learning Environment to improve the enactment of Black and Wiliam’s strategies of formative assessment, strengthen and evaluate their action.

The COVID-19 pandemic has evidenced a need for tools and methodologies to support students’ autonomous learning and the formative assessment practices in distance education contexts, especially for students from challenging backgrounds. This paper proposes a conceptualization of Interactive Feedback (IF) for Mathematics, which is a step-by-step interactive process that guides the learner in the resolution of a task after one or more autonomous tentative. This conceptualization is grounded on theories and models of automatic assessment, formative assessment, and feedback. We discuss the effectiveness of the IF for engaging students from low socio-economic contexts in closing the gap between current and reference performance through a didactic experimentation involving 299 Italian students in grade 8. Using quantitative analyses on data from the automatic assessment, we compared the results of the first and last attempts in activities with and without IF, based on algorithmic parameters so that the task changes at every attempt. We found that IF was more effective than other kinds of activities to engage learners in actions aimed at improving their results, and the effects are stronger in low socio-economic contexts.

In the academic year 2014/2015, University of XXX started the Project Orient@mente , aimed to support students in the transition from high school to university. Several Massive Open Online Courses have been developed to support three main actions: guidance to the University offer, automated self-testing of basic knowledge, self-paced review of fundamental disciplinary concepts learned in high school; all of them are useful to help students successfully attend scientific courses of the first year of University. A key feature of the Project is the continuous open-access to the platform. Contents are built according to educational models grown thanks to the experience and the research in e-learning carried out by the University, especially in the use of an accessible learning management system integrated with an advanced computing environment, an automated assessment system and a web conference system to enhance teaching and learning. In this paper, the adopted methodologies are discussed, the obtained results are presented and future developments are proposed in light of relevant data collected from the platform usage and feedback received by users.

Le risorse digitali giocano un ruolo strategico nel recupero scolastico soprattutto in matematica. Nel progetto “Scuola dei Compiti”, realizzato dalla Città di Torino, con la collaborazione dell’Università di Torino, sono prodotti, e messi a disposizione degli studenti, testi digitali, realizzati con un ambiente di calcolo evoluto, e contenenti parti interattive e parti valutate automaticamente. La produzione di tali testi avviene durante gli incontri in presenza o a distanza con gli studenti o in un secondo momento da parte di tutor nella filosofia del problem posing e solving. Lo scopo è promuovere, attraverso un ambiente virtuale di apprendimento, un ruolo attivo dello studente nell’apprendimento della disciplina e suscitare un maggiore interesse verso la materia.