The Analysis of Online Learning Behavior of the Students with Poor Academic Performance in Mathematics and Individual Help Strategies

摘要

It is crucially important that educational practitioners and researchers pay attention to the students with poor academic performance and help improve their learning. The behaviors of the students using online learning systems can be used as one important data source to analyze the students' learning behaviors. From the viewpoint of formative assessment, we define one student as a student with poor academic performance during one learning period if this student is classified into a student with poor academic performance in three quarters of all examinations during this period. After screening all students' mathematic exam scores from Grade One to Grade Three of one experiment class in a junior high school in China, six students are identified as students with poor academic performance in math education during nearly three years' study period. They performed worse in most examinations, but not bad in some examinations. Based on the OLAI (Online Learning Activity Index) model proposed by Jia and Yu (2017) to describe the students' online learning activities, we analyze the students' online quiz activity in a web-based interactive learning system by comparing the values of the OLAI dimensions of the students. The data analysis shows that every student had his or her own feature, and thus individual approaches to help each student are suggested. All the poor students had a bad performance in the starting point, i.e. the first exam. Their deficiency in previous study prevented them from understanding new knowledge and should be overcome at first. Overall, their online performance is positively correlated with the normal exam performance. The online quiz activities with instant feedback is helpful for the students with poor academic performance in their normal exams. The more challenging quizzes and the frequent help from teaching assistants online must not lead to better performance in normal exams.