Design and study of results of a structured evaluation in a Mathematics course with students entering the university

Abstract

The present paper is a research of learning in Mathematics at admission in the Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento. Coordinating teams from Math’s Workshop have implemented several actions in order to improve results in final exams, which have usually had bad results. A structured exam with multiple-choice and true – false items has been developed to obtain accurate information about basic competences worked during mathematical course.

We present the design of the exam and several characteristics required to create each item it included. Once it applied we analyzed the answers obtained from 226 written tests. We were able to recognize either pupil’s strengths as the application of the Pythagorean theorem and the collection of information from graphs or pupil’s weaknesses as calculating the gradient of a line and some

algebraically issues.

Derived data let us perform suggestions to teachers who dictate the course in order to achieve higher quality learning in students.