A.P. Lopes1, F. Soares1, M.P. Nunes2, C. Neto2, M. Fernandes2, M. Monteiro2
In an era of constant educational transformation, keeping instructional content and strategies up to date is essential. As a result, educators are required to embrace new educational paradigms and rethink traditional teaching methods to better respond to students’ evolving learning needs. In past few years, digital learning environments have emerged as powerful tools that support personalized, flexible, and student-centered approaches to teaching and learning.
This paper presents a learning approach implemented in a Higher Education Mathematics Course, which combined digital learning tools with face-to-face training sessions. The digital component of this project has a variety of resources to support and increase student’s independent learning. These resources included interactive quizzes that provided immediate feedback, as well as structured and interactive lessons designed to encourage and allow students to learn at their own pace given them confidence. The digital component was also complemented by classroom sessions focused on reinforcing key mathematical concepts and addressing persistent learning difficulties through collaborative, hands-on problem-solving activities. To better understand student engagement and performance throughout the project, a set of learning analytics tools was used. These tools provided valuable insights into how students interacted with the content, how actively they participated, and where they struggled, allowing more informed pedagogical decisions.
Moreover, a survey was given to students and revealed optimistic student perceptions, participants reported increased confidence, greater understanding of mathematical content, and appreciation for the support provided by both the digital and in-person components. The results obtained with this approach suggest that it contributed to a positive impact on students’ achievement overall.
Keywords: Digital Tools, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Mathematics Education.