E-learning and e-assessment at Bergen University College: experiences, plans, possibilities

Speaker:

Alexander Lundervold, associate professor at Bergen University College

Abstract:

During the academic year 2015/2016 we have used e-assessment and e-learning in various mathematics courses at HiB. Students have been given problems and exercises–obligatory and voluntary–in the computer aided assessment system WeBWorK, webwork.akademix.no, which are automatically corrected (with feedback). This is in addition to more standard written assignments aimed at testing the students mathematical reasoning ability.

We have also piloted a support course for our second calculus course for electrical engineers: http://beta.akademix.no/courses/course-v1:HiB+MAT106x+2016_T1/about, consisting of videos, text and exercises. We have built a platform based on Open edX to enable the delivery of structured courses, where the students can be tracked and automatically assessed. During the autumn semester we will create complete support courses for "Calculus 1" and "Calculus 2" using this platform.

We believe that these tools have a great potential to improve our mathematics courses. Students get more individualized instruction and we can free up time in the lectures. This time can be spent on more important things than going through detailed examples and calculations. We hope to use these courses as part of a restructuring of the mathematics education for our engineering students.

It is very natural to consider using these tools in other courses, not just mathematics. In this talk I will present the current status of our project, our short-term plans, and discuss future possibilities.