The Significance of Guidance in Mathematics Education Courses: Before Vs During the Pandemic

Abstract

The role of lecturers as university educators in giving sufficient guidance to their students is an essential factor, especially in mathematics courses. Despite university students being viewed as autonomous learners, they still need adequacy in explanation towards mathematics concepts. During the pandemic, numerous information is accessible for students from various online sources. This condition causes educators to tend to provide less guidance. Referring to this phenomenon, is sufficient guidance still significant? This study aims to expose the significance of guidance through the tutorial class. Students as pre-service mathematics teachers of cohort 2019 from Pelita Harapan University (n = 39) were taken as participants, for they underwent tutorial classes before pandemic with sufficient guidance and during pandemic with less and minimum guidance, associated with gender and self-regulated learning (SRL) level. The instruments were a questionnaire of SRL, open questions as students' feedback, and students' holistic final scores. The quantitative study was conducted by using a three-way Anova and t-test supported by analyzing the open questions through simple coding. The results indicate that sufficient guidance brings higher learning outcomes, regardless of gender and SRL level