Web-Based Automatic Feedback on Assignments in Statistics : How Can it Help Students Learn Statistics and Universities Reduce Costs?
Original version
Kvadsheim, R., Mehlen, M. & Kittang, H. (2010). Web-Based Automatic Feedback on Assignments in Statistics : How Can it Help Students Learn Statistics and Universities Reduce Costs?. International Journal of Engineering Education, 26 (3), 642-654Abstract
A non-experimental study in 2005 suggested that immediate, automatic feedback on assignments
helped to increase study motivation as well as pass rate among engineering students attending an
introductory course in statistics at Oslo University College. In the follow-up study reported here we
used an experimental design assigning the participants randomly to one of two experimental
conditions: The ‘web-supported’ students received immediate, automatic feedback after having
entered their responses to the assignments electronically. The ‘paper-supported’ students received
written feedback on their paper-based submissions several days later. The findings contradicted the
results of the non-experimental study: no significant differences between the groups were found
with regard to final examination grades, study effort (with a certain qualification) and preferences
with regard to the method for submitting answers. Running tutoring costs, however, were much
lower for the web-supported than for the paper-supported students.Therefore, the present methodologically
improved study strengthens the evidence that such learning support may help reduce
running tutoring costs without significantly lowering final examination grades. Reinforcing this
conclusion, certain remaining weaknesses in the experimental procedure open the possibility that
the final examination grades of the paper-supported students have been inflated relative to those of
the web-supported students. Moreover, questionnaire data and informal observations obtained
during this experiment suggest that the tested web-based system of learning support can be
combined with more traditional ways of promoting learning that may help increase learning with
only a small increase in tutoring costs. These challenges with regard to the test methodology and the
design of the learning-support system need to be addressed in new experiments.
Keywords: web-supported learning; automatic feedback; immediate feedback; tutoring costs;
statistics