Exploring Strategies To Promote Engagement And Active Learning Through Digital Course Design In Engineering Mathematics

This research explores the strategies and techniques used to foster and promote the engagement and active learning of engineering students within a digital course. This digital course has been developed to address the varying levels of understanding of fundamental mathematics among first-year engineering students, who often have disparate levels of prior knowledge at their high school completion. We observe an increasing need to bridge the widening gap between high school and university mathematics in order to prevent engineering students from being hindered in their academic successes due to a lack of prior mathematical understanding. With a team of engineers and mathematicians, both researchers and educators, we are developing a mathematics Bridging Course including the use of digital tools, such as videos, online interactions and technology-based assessments. These sources were created, investigated and/or modified to develop an engaging learning environment in which students are made aware of and guided through misconceptions and mistakes in their understanding of fundamental mathematics. In the development of this Bridging Course, we consider the importance of interactive learning and timely feedback for student learning. We investigate the impact of digital course design on students’ performance and learning outcomes using a qualitative approach. Students feedback within the first stage of the implementation of the course offered a positive assessment of the course, accentuating its inherent advantages and attributes. The students’ feedback proved to be an invaluable source of insights, specifically concerning the enhancement of question distractors, thus prompting revisions and augmentations in the assessment items employed.