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Empowering Engagement through Automatic Formative Assessment

Engagement is one of the most powerful driving forces that moves learners forward in a learning experience. The effects of engagement are related with enjoyment in learning, good results and prevention to drop-outs. Technologies, and in particular automatic formative assessment, can positively influence engagement, as well as providing data to measure it. This paper discusses how computer-based activities with automatic formative assessment and interactive feedback can promote engagement in Mathematics at school level. After discussing a theoretical framework for defining and measuring engagement, the potentialities of activities with automatic formative assessment and interactive feedback designed according to a specific model are illustrated. The activities have been experimented with 299 students of grade 8 in Italy. Through questionnaires administered before and at the end of the experimentation and through data from the online platform, the effects of the online activities on student engagement is evaluated. The activities resulted particularly effective to increase the engagement level in students that had low attitudes toward Mathematics at the beginning of the project.