Abstract:

The potential power of formative assessment techniques for enhancing math skills has been widely developed in the last years. The main goal of this paper intends to construct a point of reflection around the teaching and learning process of some mathematical contents, based on formative assessment.
This work relates to an experience developed in the academic course of Mathematics that integrates the curriculum of the first year in the Accounting and International Commerce degrees. In addition, an analysis of results obtained in formative tests performed by students in mathematical topics in the two courses mentioned before at Institute of Accounting and Administration of Porto (ISCAP) is presented.
These tests were developed in MatActiva project, based on the Moodle platform and in accordance with the goals of the summative assessment defined in both subjects.
The MatActiva project arose at ISCAP as a need to improve learning and levels of success in the subjects of Mathematics.
We intend to analyse if the use of formative tests can contribute to an improvement of the results of summative assessment in these curricular units of Mathematics. We will discuss the results obtained in these tests, comparing them with the results obtained in the summative assessment. Furthermore, we present a brief data analysis of a data set from a survey carried out by students that performed the formative assessment.
Some results of the training tests provided by Google Analytics and other Moodle statistics are also presented.

Keywords:

Formative assessment, Higher Education, Mathematics, Moodle.