Implementation of Feedback Supporting Formative Assessment Into Mathematical Digital Learning Materials

Abstract

ABSTRACTOfficial documents of educational policy of the European Union highlight the importance of integrating ICT into education. Interactive learning materials play an important role in the meaningful use of ICT to support an active learning. Providing feedback dependent on student´s actions should be a standard part of the digital learning materials. The immediate feedback in the classroom during the learning process is in most cases provided by the teacher. The importance of feedback even increases when students work with the digital learning materials independently in the classroom or at home. Moreover, ICT tools offer a great potential for detecting and eliminating students' mistakes. A notification of a concrete type of error in student’s way of task solution and guiding students during the corrections of their solutions creates conditions for application of formative assessment which provides suggestions to students for improving their learning. The effectiveness of feedback depends on the way how the typical errors of students are taken into account and what way the appropriate hints are implemented in learning. Various forms of feedback should be implemented in the interactive learning materials in order to stimulate the active learning. In many available the digital learning materials there is often a minimal feedback provided on student´s solution of a certain task. This paper discusses the implementation of various types of feedback in an interactive mathematics learning environment. Even though the minimal feedback can stimulate the active learning, it may not be sufficient for some types of students who do not think deeply about their methods of problem solving. Higher levels of feedback are characterized by providing comments that depend on student's mistakes and by providing pieces of advice and other helpful additional information that are closely related to the solution of tasks. The diagnosis of typical student´s misconceptions was based on the analysis of the results of the prepared tests, which were given to students at high school. Demonstrations of the minimal feedback and higher levels of feedback are illustrated in the examples of fractions, percentages and investigation of function dependencies. The interactive learning materials are developed using Geogebra and MS Excel.