Developing an Automated Practice Environment and Feedback Engine for Guided Instruction in the Deformable Bodies Course

Mathematical problem solving is a fundamental competency demanded by employers and an integral component of engineering education. We seek to improve instruction in mathematical concept-based engineering courses. To this end, we created an interactive problem solving environment that provides targeted feedback on a student's problem solving attempts by having them work mathematical exercises in a dedicated intuitive software interface. We provide syntactic feedback that is independent of the problem statement, as well as semantic feedback. Semantic feedback is achieved by systematically comparing the ground-truth solution for the exercises provided by the instructor with the student's attempt and reconstructing appropriate error messages based on the differences detected between the solutions. Our systematic approach is based on analyzing the dependencies between equations used by the student, and comparing either individual equations or a reduced representation of a sequence of equations with each other to identify and report differences. We conducted a study to evaluate the quality of the feedback provided by the system. We also conducted surveys on usability of the interface. Based on the studies conducted, we prove the effectiveness of the system and the engine both as a tool for providing rapid and accurate assessment of correctness of exercise attempts.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science & Applications

Department dc:contributor.department

Computer Science and#38; Applications

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Basak, Arinjoy

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Shaffer, Clifford A.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Pitterson, Nicole
• North, Christopher L.
• Gramoll, Kurt Clyde
• Grohs, Jacob Richard
• Heath, Lenwood S.

• Automated Assessment
• Automated Feedback
• Engineering Mechanics
• Symbolic Algebra
• Usability
• Electronic Learning
• Computer Mediated Communication
• Engineering Education
• Undergraduate Students
• Error Patterns
• Problem Solving

Statement dc:rights

• Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:45588

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/140971