Understanding and Optimizing Mistake Messages in Mathematics

Lin, Shannen; Pradhan, Siddhartha; Sandoval-Williams, Chayanne

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Understanding and Optimizing Mistake Messages in Mathematics

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With the advancement of technology, the field of education has also improved dramatically. For example, technology has provided teachers the ability to provide immediate feedback to students through the use of tools like ASSISTments, an online learning platform where teachers can assign homework to their students and view analytics regarding their students’ progress. While these new technologies have improved learning, it also raises new questions. Specifically, we were interested in how different types of computer-provided feedback could affect students’ performance and emotions. In addition, we also looked at math anxiety, which is increased nervousness and physiological reactivity when engaging with math, to see how it interacts with different types of feedback (Luttenberger et al., 2018). We conducted 2 studies, the first experiment evaluates the use of feedback and positive feedback messages to students who made common wrong answers. The second experiment analyzes the relationship between math anxiety and feedback tone on participants’ emotions and attitudes toward math.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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