A learning environment, the tutor-web (http://tutor-web.net), has been developed and used for educational research. The system is accessible and free to use for anyone having access to the Web. It is based on open source software and the teaching mat
erial is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. The system has been used for computer-assisted education in statistics and mathematics. It offers a unique way to structure and link together teaching material and includes interactive quizzes with the primary purpose of increasing learning rather than mere evaluation. The system was used in a course on basic statistics in the University of Iceland, spring 2013. A randomized trial was conducted to investigate the difference in learning between students doing regular homework and students using the system. The difference between the groups was not found to be significant.
An on-line drilling system, the tutor-web, has been developed and used for teaching mathematics and statistics. The system was used in a basic course in calculus including 182 students. The students were requested to answer quiz questions in the tuto
r-web and therefore monitored continuously during the semester. Data available are grades on a status exam conducted in the beginning of the course, a final grade and data gathered in the tutor-web system. A classification of the students is proposed using the data gathered in the system; a Good student should be able to solve a problem quickly and get it right, the diligent hard-working Learner may take longer to get the right answer, a guessing (Poor) student will not take long to get the wrong answer and the remaining (Unclassified) apparent non-learning students take long to get the wrong answer, resulting in a simple classification GLUP. The (Poor) students were found to show the least improvement, defined as the change in grade from the status to the final exams, while the Learners were found to improve the most. The results are used to demonstrate how further experiments are needed and can be designed as well as to indicate how a system needs to be further developed to accommodate such experiments.
An educational system, the tutor-web (http://tutor-web.net), has been developed and used for educational research. The system is accessible and free to use for anyone having access to the Web. It is based on open source software and the teaching mate
rial is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. The system has been used for computer-assisted education in statistics and mathematics. It offers a unique way to structure and link together teaching material and includes interactive quizzes with the primary purpose of increasing learning rather than mere evaluation. The system was used in a course on basic statistics in 2011. Three types of data were gathered during the course. A randomized crossover experiment was conducted to assess the possible difference in learning (measured by repeated exams) between students using the system and students doing regular homework. The difference between the groups was not found to be significant. Responses to quiz questions were collected and analysed with item response theory type models. These analysis were used to improve the item banks. Finally, the students answered an in-class survey regarding their experience using the tutor-web. The responses of the students gave clear indications of student preferences.
Research is described on a system for web-assisted education and how it is used to deliver on-line drill questions, automatically suited to individual students. The system can store and display all of the various pieces of information used in a class
-room (slides, examples, handouts, drill items) and give individualized drills to participating students. The system is built on the basic theme that it is for learning rather than evaluation. Experimental results shown here imply that both the item database and the item allocation methods are important and examples are given on how these need to be tuned for each course. Different item allocation methods are discussed and a method is proposed for comparing several such schemes. It is shown that students improve their knowledge while using the system. Classical statistical models which do not include learning, but are designed for mere evaluation, are therefore not applicable. A corollary of the openness and emphasis on learning is that the student is permitted to continue requesting drill items until the system reports a grade which is satisfactory to the student. An obvious resulting challenge is how such a grade should be computed so as to reflect actual knowledge at the time of computation, entice the student to continue and simultaneously be a clear indication for the student. To name a few methods, a grade can in principle be computed based on all available answers on a topic, on the last few answers or on answers up to a given number of attempts, but all of these have obvious problems.
