Use of an Intelligent Tutoring System for Mathematics by Students Who Aspire to Enter the Technological University of Panama

This paper reports the use of an intelligent tutoring system (STI) at the Technological University of Panama by students applying to the university during 2018. All participating students had the opportunity to interact via Internet with a mathematics focused STI, to assess the level of their mathematical knowledge and receive personalized tutoring to improve it. This article describes the usage of the STI by a cohort of aspiring students, as well as the most relevant aspects revealed by their interaction with the learning platform. Results suggest that use of the STI may reduce some of the initial differences found within the cohort, and that this effect is strongly correlated with the time spent in the platform, but not with the level of initial knowledge. The significance of this work is twofold: fist, it introduces the use of an STI as a complementary learning tool for second and third level education in Panama, whilst shedding light on the low math levels of students aspiring to enter the university.