Abstract:

The European Higher Education Area has promoted Student-centred learning for the last eighteen years. It is an approach to education which tries to establish new teaching methods based on active student participation. It focuses on the learner, rather than being centred around the teacher's input [1,3]. In this sense, Moodle allows us to make "learning objects" to promote self and cooperative learning.

This paper is a continuation of previous studies [2,4,5,6,7]. They analyze some experiments on learning in Mathematics that were carried out with first-year students of the Chemistry Degree of the University of Cádiz. These studies are relevant because of the importance that Mathematics contents have for the development of Chemistry and the abstraction ability that Mathematics provides. Moreover these experiments can easily be extrapolated to every technical degree. In these five papers we can see how the interactive Moodle tools are used to improve the teaching of Mathematics.

The current paper continues in the same line of work, and analyzes the results achieved by Chemistry students when they perform several activities in a virtual Moodle course. The novelty with respect to other occasions is the use of statistical inference in these analyzes. The advantage of statistical inference is that the conclusions are not limited to the sample, but rather they allow predictions to be made for future learners. Thus we can redirect the learning process if it is necessary.

As in past years, we proposed a level test at the beginning of the course, and have compared its marks with the final exam ones through an inferential analysis.

Our main objective here is to analyze if there exists any type of relationship between the activities performed along the course and the final exam mark. A positive dependence would show us the utility of these activities and would reinforce our idea that we have chosen suitable activities for the student development. Unfortunately, the study reveals that the Moodle activities carried out are not reflected in the final exam mark (unlike partial exams). Therefore we need to rethink how to carry out these activities and improve their feedback.

References:
[1] A. Attard, E. Di Ioio, K. Geven, and R. Santa. Student Centered Learning. An Insight Into Theory And Practice. Partos Timisoara, 2010.
[2] M. E. Cornejo-Piñero, J. Medina-Moreno, E. Ramírez-Poussa. Las Matemáticas de los alumnos de nuevo ingreso. II Congreso Internacional: Uso y buenas prácticas con TIC, Málaga, 2011.
[3] S. J. Lea, D. Stephenson, and J. Troy. Higher education students' attitudes to student-centred learning: Beyond 'educational bulimia'? Studies in Higher Education, 28 (3): 321-334, 2003.
[4] J. Medina-Moreno. E-learning con Moodle para alumnos de matemáticas. I Congreso Virtual Internacional sobre Innovación Pedagógica y Praxis Educativa (INNOVAGOGIA 2012), 840-845.
[5] J. Medina-Moreno, J. García-Andrades. University Students learn Mathematics with Moodle. 5th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN13), Barcelona, 2013, 2955-2963.
[6] J. Medina-Moreno, J. García-Andrades, M. Villegas-Vallecillos. Teaching Mathematics in technical graduations with Moodle. EDULEARN14, Barcelona, 2014, 3194-3202.
[7] J. Medina, I. Izquierdo-Cruz, M. Villegas-Vallecillos. Moodle and the continuous evaluation in Mathematics learning. 8th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, Sevilla, 2015, 1714-1723.

Keywords:

Teaching innovation, Moodle, Mathematics e-learning.