E-learning in mass education

Abstract

The use of e-learning environments has become increasingly common in the teaching of mathematics at all levels of education. With powerful and influential agencies such as the US ‘National Council for Mathematics Teaching’ endorsing their use as pedagogical tools, e-learning environments have become widespread; particularly, at the tertiary level. One consequence of mass education is that lecturers have less time to allocate to each student hence this piece of action research looked at the use of eresources to increase student-lecturer interaction. The current study investigated the use of e-learning using a commercial environment to investigate its impact on grade score averages. The study found that students who used the environment did better than their peers in post-course summative assessments and they considered the e-learning environment to be useful because it aided their learning; however, over the duration of the semester, the number of students using the environment declined. The feedback from a post course questionnaire indicated that some students used the e-learning environment as a tool to help them understand topics that they previously misunderstood. However, it also revealed that a large number of students used the e-learning environment for an alternative purpose; that was to practice questions relentlessly and memorise solutions without understanding the mathematical concepts. While this process was effective in aiding the students in their summative assessment tasks, it was ultimately non-rewarding in terms of formative feedback and defeated the purpose of using an e-learning environment to increase lecturer-student interaction. This study concludes that in spite of understanding the benefit of the e-learning environment, many students lost interest in using it as a pedagogical tool.