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 at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University has allowed the implementation of a question bank, with feed­back, with the purpose of supporting students in their learning process for the subject of Mathe­matical Thinking; this subject is taught through lectures and workshops that are interrelated and leaded by different professors, one lecture ses­sion and two workshop sessions per week. A pedagogical innovation project was developed along two academic periods with the purpose of observing if the use of this online question bank with feedback improved the appropriation of mathematical concepts. The questions that are part of this bank were designed following recommendations for ela­borating multiple choice questions with one ans­wer; the selection of distractors for each question was made following conceptual or procedural re­asons, which is where most of the difficulties for students are when solving an evaluation on this subject. For each question a detailed description was made, including conceptual aspects and key features 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 of who elaborated the question and name of who reviewed it. Each question was made available on this bank, located at the Virtual Classrooms System at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University (AVATA is the name of this Learning Management System wor­king over Moodle) and corresponding to the Mathematical Thinking course, organized on folders separated by topics and levels of diffi­culty, according to the available syllabus of the subject. Evaluation models that gathered the to­pics covered on each of the three segments that form the academic period were used; such for­mative assessment was made available for stu­dents two weeks before each course evaluation. Due to the features of this evaluation, online, with multiple attempts and accessible from mul­tiple devices, students were able to prepare their evaluations with a higher level of autonomy and at the pace, they would establish. Surveys, interviews and focus groups from students and professors that were part of the Mathematical Thinking course were carried out, with the purpose of identifying qualitative fea­tures that could eventually lead to adjustments and improvements to the question bank, al­though not many students participated in these interviews and surveys. Among the qualitative aspects that were highlighted is the fact that stu­dents felt comfortable when using this kind of evaluation, as they did not feel the pressure of the results; they also pointed out the role of workshop professors as a motivating element to consult the question bank in order to prepare the evaluations and strengthen mathematical con­cepts. The data obtained from each evaluation mo­del and the results from students during the aca­demic periods were analyzed statistically, allow­ing to conclude that there is a significant dif­ference on course grades, both partial and finals, for students who used the evaluation models and students who did not. Results, both qualita­tive and quantitative, indicated that in general terms there is an improvement in performance for students who access to these online evalua­tion models compared to students who don’t. In order to continue progressing on the work presented here, it is necessary to feed the bank with more questions, considering the aspects in­dicated from students and professors and also as a way of expanding the possibilities of rando­mizing the questions as students use the bank. It is also important to carry out statistical analysis to questions, with the purpose of establishing with better precision their levels of difficulty and the levels of difficulty of the evaluation mo­dels themselves.