Least squares as the past, present and future of Linear Algebra examination at Lund University

Abstract

The courses students experience first in higher education can set the stage for their future subject matter understanding and their choice between a surface or deep approach to learning. Therefore building a good foundation in those two areas early on is vital. Here we focus on first- semester student performance in linear algebra exams with a newly introduced problem type. We find that by providing prior exams, student performance on newly introduced problems quickly saturates at a high level. This performance improvement is especially the case for students following a deep approach to learning. While this can suggest that students objectively understand the given sub-topic better, the access to prior exams promotes a shallow learning approach in a recipe-memorization-based examination.