INCREASING MOTIVATION THROUGH CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT IN STATISTICS

One of the most important aspects in teaching statistics is to achieve that students find the subject attractive and feel motivated to study it. This is a very hard task because in one hand in the degree programs at Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), statistics is studied during the first or second year and in many cases students have never studied this subject before and on the other hand, students find very difficult to see the application of the statistical concepts to their future professional work.

The Bologna process has entailed a change in teaching practices like the continuous assessment, the increase of the number of different activities, the contents have been reoriented, etc. in the different subjects. In most cases, it has led to an increase in the students’ workload.

In the subject of statistics in the degree in Aerospace Engineering and in the degree in Industrial Technologies at UPV, we have introduced a continuous assessment to achieve two objectives: to guide the learning process during the course and to increase the motivation of the students towards statistics.

In this paper, we present how we have implement this continuous assessment and the analysis of the results of this experience. Students have to solve one self-assessment test per didactic unit through the platform developed at UPV called PoliformaT. This gives a fast feedback to the student who is able to check its knowledge. If there is something that he/she considers that it is not clear enough, students attend to tutorials, which had favoured closer relations among students and teachers. The results show that students feel more confident in the final exam and therefore the number of students that pass the course has been increased.