Using STACK to individualise tutorials in mathematics

First-year students often lack mathematical basics and the ability to identify their own knowledge gaps and to close them in a self-organised way with the available learning materials. Unfortunately, there is often little time in lectures and tutorials to close these individual gaps in basic knowledge due to new and more advanced topics that need to be learned and dealt with.

In order to address this problem, the project EduFIT introduced a new blended learning concept at the computer science departement of the DHBW Mannheim (Cooperative State University). EduFIT aims to individualise tutorials and optimise practice time. This is achieved in two ways. First, the courses are divided into smaller groups of 10 - 15 participants with similar prior knowledge and problems which then attend separate tutorials. This division is accomplished by a short online test at the end of each lecture. In the second step, online tests are also used in the tutorials to encourage problem solving and optimise practice time. In both cases we put our focus on highly informative and individual feedback. Due to these requirements all online tests are mostly implemented by using STACK questions.

In the use case of EduFIT students and tutors both benefit greatly from the usage of STACK. By providing students with automated specific feedback through STACK, tutors are freed from discussing standard errors that arise from a lack of basic knowledge. At the same time, students can still close their gaps and catch up to the current lecture material by using the aforementioned online tests. With the help of STACK this can also be achieved for deeper mathematical topics that would otherwise be hard to test or train in an online setting.