The effect of weekly distributed mathematics homework and quizzes on the learning performance of engineering students

Education should promote learning which goes beyond short-term memory and lasts for years. Many research results suggest that a repeated practice over time is necessary to achieve long-lasting and long-term learning. Engineering mathematics consists of the basic skills which every kind of engineer must master. Within the scope of this study, we developed a learning system for mathematics lectures of engineering students. Instead of evaluating the students with midterm and final examinations, we evaluted a group of 89 engineering students with weekly homework and quizzes and compared it with two control groups of 85 and 114 engineering students. Our hypothesis for this study is: Learning by doing with guidance and distributed practices leads to better learning results than just watching the lecturer explaining and solving exercises. The midterm and final examinations are analogous to massed practices which cannot penetrate into the field of long-term leaning. The comparison with two control groups showed that the grades and long-term learning effects are significantly higher for the group with weekly homework and quizzes. © 2019 TEMPUS Publications.