Realignment Course in Mathematics: design of an online valuable experience for students

Supporting students in the transition from secondary school to university is an important action to be taken in order to increase the number of people with tertiary education degrees; it has positive consequences on the citizens’ working perspective and on the national economic growth. To this purpose, in the academic year 2014/2015 the University of Turin started the Project Orient@mente, a platform of self-paced open online courses aimed to guide students in the choice of a scientific university program. This paper focuses on the design of the Realignment Course in Mathematics, provided by the platform and aimed at the self-paced review and integration of knowledge that students are required to acquire during secondary school. Materials are created and structured according to the User Experience Design for Learning, with the aim of providing a valuable learning experience to students. Contents are delivered through an accessible learning management system integrated with an advanced computing environment and an automatic assessment system. Data from the usage of the activities and from the results of the online tests are analyzed in order to validate the design choices and the coherent structure of the course.