1. Assessing Calculus students in Engineering schools Authors: M. Rosa Estela Carbonell Joel Saà Seoane 9-12 June 2009 Barcelona

2. Summary Calculus Virtual Course Virtual and innovating content ◦Graphic resources, ◦Laboratories, ◦Calendar, ◦Forums and other contact ways… Assessment ◦Current evaluation, ◦Interactive exercises, ◦Televoting, ◦Questionnaires, Further possibilities for teachers Motivating tasks for students 2M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà

3. Calculus Virtual Course course on Calculus A new and complete course on Calculus has been developed. Thought to be used by students on their first academic year at engineering degrees. Moodle The innovating element is mainly the interactivity between student and teacher, through the platform Moodle. M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà3

4. Calculus Virtual Course M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà4

5. Calculus Virtual Course The paper version material is not forgotten. Actually students find it essential in order to be able to study satisfactorily. Therefore: Cálculo, con soporte interactivo en Moodle. Pearson Educación. 2008 Moodle The course is now all available in a digital version on Moodle: all the theory contenets, exercises… and also using the interactive tools that the platform offers. www.mates24h.com/pearson/ M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà5

6. Virtual and innovating content Moodle The greatest advantage that the adaptation of the course to Moodle offers is mainly focused on the diferent sections that this platform makes now possible: ◦Questionnaires, ◦Forums,… Moodle Wiris as well as the tools that one can adapt to Moodle depending on the course taught. In this case, using Wiris: ◦Laboratories, ◦Exercises… M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà6

7. Graphic resources Wiris The virtual version of the course allows the incorporation of moving graphics as well as better color combination than the paper version. Many 2D and 3D resources have been included in order to help the student understand the different concepts or ideas. The student can also easily create his/her own pictures and graphics using Wiris, which has the particular advantage of being very user-friendly. M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà7

8. Laboratories Wiris Wiris is a mathematical software used for solving many problems regarding math's. Graphic resources of this software makes it more accurate for a course of Calculus like ours than other similar products such as Maple or Matlab. Lab’s are thought to be for personal practice for the students. They can interact with a window showing a particular problem changing the initial values and moving the graphic. M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà8

9. Calendar, forums and other contact ways M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà9 In addition to the global university events programmed for a specific date, the teachers can add events, such as, evaluations, particular activities… in a calendar which is permanently shown in the main page of the platform. Moreover, students can be contacted through forums or even plan chat sessions. This is one of the strongest points of the distance learning.

10. Assessment M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà10 For engineers, Calculus is an important mother subject, in their first academic course. Therefore and regarding the new EEES remarks, we will evaluate the students through the following formulae. where Pi is from 0 to 10 the grade of each partial exam, F is the grade of the final exam and CE shows the grade of the continuous evaluation. max{0.4P1+0.4P2+0.3CE, 0.7F+0.3CE}

11. Current evaluation M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà11 The students will have to take a couple of exams as the course is a year-long one. That is, a partial evaluation in January, P1, another partial exam P2 in May (or a final one F, in case P1 in January was not satisfactory enough). This exams will be ~3 hours long and at University. There are also some exercises given at room sessions which help building the continuous evaluation.

12. Interactive exercises Working a little bit further with laboratories, some interactive exercises can be thought and developed. That is, for an specific topic, students can find a link to a new window of interactive exercises. In this window, the student will find many different kind of exercises, regarding the topic, which must be solved. Student can ask for a hunt or just see the solution. A counter registers the grades that the student gets. M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà12

13. Televoting The last innovation is called televoting. This is a mean of teaching that can sometimes be used in room lessons in order to get the student attention and help their motivation to increase. Teachers must prepare little program very similar to a power point with an specific software and then go to class and let the students answer through a remote control. Instant statistics are shown on the screen. M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà13

14. Questionnaires A large bank of questions has been developed and so the students can solve a questionnaire for each chapter, having a totally new questionnaire for each attempt. Some question- naires have been thought to be solved by the students at home as self training; but there is al- ways a particular question- naire which is asked to be done in a computer class session and which is part of the continuous evalua- tion grade. M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà14

15. Nuevas posibilidades para el profesor M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà15 Moodle Importando este curso a la plataforma Moodle de cada universidad puede personalizarse un curso completo de Cálculo a gusto de cada profesor. Se importa el curso base, se ocultan los temas e información que no interesa, se añaden los documentos e información de que cada profesor dispone formando así un curso óptimo para cada asignatura.

16. Moodle Teachers can adapt this to their personal course, as Moodle allows to add or delete/hide information if it is not remarkable for an specific Course. M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà16 Best performance Tiny effort That is, teachers have an easy way of creating a great bank of modern material, which will surely help the students and everything, with a quite small effort. Further possibilites for teachers

17. Motivating tasks for students The students give a very to this new methodology positive answer of teaching and learning. There has been a very nice acceptance to this availability of fair and comfortable material. highest dedication better performance As a result, a highest dedication is shown by students and so, instantaneously, a far better performance while they learn far more Calculus than some years ago. M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà17

18. Acknowledgements Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) Escola Tècnica Superior d’Enginyers de Camins, Canals i Ports de Barcelona (ETSECCPB) Institut de Ciències de l’Educació (ICE) Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i Recerca (Agaur) Pearson Educación Mathsformore (Wiris) M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà18

19. Thank you! M. Rosa Estela and Joel Saà19