Strategies to Remove Barriers and Increase Motivation to Use the Tablet PC in Formative Assessment

Abstract

The Tablet PC has been employed to provide feedback through formative assessment to students in preparatory mathematics courses at Central Queensland University for close to a decade. A study conducted in 2011 on formative assessment and feedback given via the Tablet PC within these courses conveyed extremely positive outcomes (Adams, Dekkers, & Elliott, 2012). Approximately 90% of the 140 students surveyed found the feedback beneficial to their learning and that assessment was returned, on average, within two to four days. These findings would indicate that these methods should be adopted into mainstream higher education courses (Adams, et al., 2012). Building on the research and experiences of staff involved in the use of the Tablet PC to provide feedback on formative assessment in preparatory mathematics courses, strategies to implement and improve these practices in undergraduate engineering courses are investigated in this chapter.