Impact of Using Automatic E-Learning Correctors on Teaching Business Subjects to Engineers

Abstract

An innovative higher education is the visible outcome of the combination of the proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and novel approaches in education. We position our paper in this context, describing the experience of using an automatic e-learning corrector and its impact on both academic results and aspects of student perception. A total of 333 students doing technical degrees took a basic business administration course and the field work was conducted within this framework. An e-learning platform called ACME_Business, which automatically corrected and assessed all the exercises proposed, was designed, developed and implemented as the novel element of the course. The validity of the proposal was tested at the Polytechnic School of the University of Girona in Catalonia (Spain). The results show that implementing the solution is helpful in the learning process and in monitoring courses and that its use improves academic results. The perception assessment showed that the students had a very good opinion of the learning experience using the proposed ICT tool. Beyond these highlighted benefits for students, teachers save time and effort, and their workload is reduced. The novelty of the solution lies in the enormous potential for personalisation, the full automatization of exercise generation, correction, feedback and grading, and the dual educational approach wherein students gain knowledge in business administration and mastery in spreadsheet use