A Remedial Course in Moodle for Undergraduate Classes of Circuit Theory

E-learning courses and tools have increased their importance and have been adopted by a growing number of universities, mainly due to the unfortunate occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic. This work presents an asynchronous and online remedial course implemented in Moodle to assist students enrolled in undergraduate engineering classes of electrical circuit theory. The course is organized in weekly modules that are delivered in parallel to regular classes. Each module consists of a preliminary test to ascertain the student’s preparation on the topic and learning units whose access is restricted to students who fail the preliminary test. The approach is suitable for large classes and is aimed to avoid students’ procrastination and promote additional and constant practice throughout the course, thereby eventually improving also their performance at the final examination as well as their preparation for subsequent courses involving the same topics. Two experiments conducted in consecutive academic years, involving 407 and 379 students, are discussed. The exam performance of students who attended the remedial classes, even those with low initial performance, was significantly better compared to those who did not participate at all. Additionally, the correlation with past exam scores demonstrates that students who engage with the Moodle course show substantial improvements in their exam scores.