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Analysis of the benefits of designing and implementing a virtual didactic model of multiple choice exam and problem-solving heuristic report, for first year engineering students

Improvements in performance and approval obtained by first year engineering students from University of Concepcion, Chile, were studied, once a virtual didactic model of multiple-choice exam, was implemented. This virtual learning resource was implemented in the Web ARCO platform and allows training, by facing test models comparable in both time and difficulty to those that they will have to solve during the course. It also provides a feedback mechanism for both: 1) The students, since they can verify the level of their knowledge. Once they have finished the simulations, they can access a complete problem-solving heuristic report of each problem; 2) The teachers, since they can obtain information about the habits of the students in their strategies of preparation; and they also can diagnose the weaknesses of the students prior to the exam. This study indicates how this kind of preparation generates substantial improvements on the approval rates by allowing the students: 1) A more structured and oriented systematic study, and 2) To learn, from the feedback report of each problem that the information described in their exams should have, at each stage, a proper logical connection. Likewise, this study allows differentiating how the repetition in the use of the platform and the formality in the time invested indicate clear differences on the obtained performance.