A case study on the impact of automated assessment in engineering mathematics

A rapidly increasing number of modulesin degree programmes now utilise virtuallearning environments. A main feature ofvirtual learning environments, to whichtheir adoption by many educators isattributed, is automated assessment.Automated assessment is particularlyattractive where the number of studentstaking a module is large. As mathematicsis an essential pre-requisite for thosestudying engineering courses and iscompulsory in almost every engineeringprogramme, classes tend to be large.However, there is ongoing scrutiny ofthe various aspects of virtual learningenvironments, including automatedassessment. This paper is based on a casestudy that highlights aspects of the impactof automated assessment by studyingthe performance of students taking anengineering mathematics module whereautomated assessment is utilised in theform of quizzes.