Cambios en el desempeño de estudiantes de pensamiento matemático desde la evaluación formativa con un banco de preguntas en línea

The use of online digital environments atJorge Tadeo Lozano University has allowed theimplementation of a question bank, with feedback,with the purpose of supporting students intheir learning process for the subject of MathematicalThinking; this subject is taught throughlectures and workshops that are interrelated andleaded by different professors, one lecture sessionand two workshop sessions per week. Apedagogical innovation project was developedalong two academic periods with the purpose ofobserving if the use of this online question bankwith feedback improved the appropriation ofmathematical concepts.The questions that are part of this bank weredesigned following recommendations for elaboratingmultiple choice questions with one answer;the selection of distractors for each questionwas made following conceptual or procedural reasons,which is where most of the difficulties forstudents are when solving an evaluation on thissubject. For each question a detailed descriptionwas made, including conceptual aspects and keyfeatures such as type of question, question statement,answer choices, reasons for each choice,key information that must be included in feedback(graphics, concepts, solved examples, etc.),cognitive and conceptual domain, level of difficulty,date of elaboration and revision, name ofwho elaborated the question and name of whoreviewed it.Each question was made available on thisbank, located at the Virtual Classrooms Systemat Jorge Tadeo Lozano University (AVATA is thename of this Learning Management System workingover Moodle) and corresponding to theMathematical Thinking course, organized onfolders separated by topics and levels of difficulty,according to the available syllabus of thesubject. Evaluation models that gathered the topicscovered on each of the three segments thatform the academic period were used; such formativeassessment was made available for studentstwo weeks before each course evaluation.Due to the features of this evaluation, online,with multiple attempts and accessible from multipledevices, students were able to prepare theirevaluations with a higher level of autonomy andat the pace, they would establish.Surveys, interviews and focus groups fromstudents and professors that were part of theMathematical Thinking course were carried out,with the purpose of identifying qualitative featuresthat could eventually lead to adjustmentsand improvements to the question bank, althoughnot many students participated in theseinterviews and surveys. Among the qualitativeaspects that were highlighted is the fact that studentsfelt comfortable when using this kind ofevaluation, as they did not feel the pressure ofthe results; they also pointed out the role ofworkshop professors as a motivating element toconsult the question bank in order to prepare theevaluations and strengthen mathematical concepts.The data obtained from each evaluation modeland the results from students during the academicperiods were analyzed statistically, allowingto conclude that there is a significant differenceon course grades, both partial and finals,for students who used the evaluation modelsand students who did not. Results, both qualitativeand quantitative, indicated that in generalterms there is an improvement in performancefor students who access to these online evaluationmodels compared to students who don’t.In order to continue progressing on the workpresented here, it is necessary to feed the bankwith more questions, considering the aspects indicatedfrom students and professors and also asa way of expanding the possibilities of randomizingthe questions as students use the bank. Itis also important to carry out statistical analysisto questions, with the purpose of establishingwith better precision their levels of difficultyand the levels of difficulty of the evaluation modelsthemselves.