scholarly journals Teaching Mathematics to Non-Mathematics Majors through Problem Solving and New Technologies

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Marina Marchisio ◽  
Sara Remogna ◽  
Fabio Roman ◽  
Matteo Sacchet

The role of mathematics in several scientific disciplines is undisputed; work and everyday life take great advantage of its application. Nevertheless, students often tend to not particularly like it and to consider it of little interest. It is also believed that only people with a certain attitude are capable of mastering the subject. In consideration of this, we aimed to help science students develop mathematical competences by designing a course specifically oriented to applications and problem solving. We administered our course to students attending the first year of a program in biotechnology, asking them to work with technologies instilling curiosity and interest, thus achieving a better proficiency as a consequence. Two questionnaires, along with access and proficiency data, allowed us to collect information about students’ attitudes, beliefs, and activity, which we analyzed by means of descriptive statistics. The promotion of the interaction among learners made them active users of the contents, thus allowing for the adaptation of their learning paths according to their personal necessities, as well as the development of teamwork skills and flexibility. Finally, students recognized the usefulness of the problem-solving approach and the role played by software.

2021 ◽  
pp. 097168582110159
Author(s):  
Sital Mohanty ◽  
Subhasis Sahoo ◽  
Pranay Kumar Swain

Science, technology and human values have been the subject of enquiry in the last few years for social scientists and eventually the relationship between science and gender is the subject of an ongoing debate. This is due to the event of globalization which led to the exponential growth of new technologies like assisted reproductive technology (ART). ART, one of the most iconic technological innovations of the twentieth century, has become increasingly a normal social fact of life. Since ART invades multiple human discourses—thereby transforming culture, society and politics—it is important what is sociological about ART as well as what is biological. This article argues in commendation of sociology of technology, which is alert to its democratic potential but does not concurrently conceal the historical and continuing role of technology in legitimizing gender discrimination. The article draws the empirical insights from local articulations (i.e., Odisha state in eastern India) for the understandings of motherhood, freedom and choice, reproductive right and rights over the body to which ART has contributed. Sociologically, the article has been supplemented within the broader perspectives of determinism, compatibilism alongside feminism.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (15) ◽  
pp. 1825
Author(s):  
Viliam Ďuriš ◽  
Gabriela Pavlovičová ◽  
Dalibor Gonda ◽  
Anna Tirpáková

The presented paper is devoted to an innovative way of teaching mathematics, specifically the subject combinatorics in high schools. This is because combinatorics is closely connected with the beginnings of informatics and several other scientific disciplines such as graph theory and complexity theory. It is important in solving many practical tasks that require the compilation of an object with certain properties, proves the existence or non-existence of some properties, or specifies the number of objects of certain properties. This paper examines the basic combinatorial structures and presents their use and learning using relations through the Placemat method in teaching process. The effectiveness of the presented innovative way of teaching combinatorics was also verified experimentally at a selected high school in the Slovak Republic. Our experiment has confirmed that teaching combinatorics through relationships among talented children in mathematics is more effective than teaching by a standard algorithmic approach.


Author(s):  
Rowan W. Hollingworth ◽  
Catherine McLoughlin

<span>Technology is increasingly being harnessed to improve the quality of learning in science subjects at university level. This article sets out, by incorporating notions drawn from constructivist and adult learning theory, a foundation for the design of an online environment for the acquisition of metacognitive problem solving skills. The capacity to solve problems is one of the generic skills now being promoted at tertiary level, yet for many learners problem-solving remains a difficulty. In addition, there are few instances of instructional design guidelines for developing learning environments to support the metacognitive skills for effective problem solving. In order to foster the processes of metacognitive skills explicitly in first year science students, we investigated areas where cognitive support was needed. The aim was to strengthen the metacognitive and reflective skills of students to assist them in adopting strategies and reflective processes that enabled them to define, plan and self monitor their thinking during problem solving. In tertiary science, both well-structured and ill-structured problems are encountered by students, thus a repertoire of skills must be fostered. A model for supporting metacognitive skills for problem solving is presented in the context of an online environment being developed at the University of New England.</span>


Author(s):  
N.V DEVDARIANI ◽  
◽  
E.V RUBTSOVA ◽  

This article presents the methodological development of lectures, material which may be used in the study course "Philosophy", "Philosophy of science and technology" and "concepts of modern natural Sciences" (cmns) for students of the Humanities in Russian universities. This lecture on "Philosophical understanding of the concept of "life": biocentricity picture of the world" presents the main approaches to the idea of the modern scientific picture of the world. Such a summary of the lecture material, according to the authors, due to the need to change existing approaches to teaching of specific disciplines. In particular those which involve integrated knowledge from different scientific disciplines and the subject of study which are universal categories and phenomena. It is noted that in the conditions of modern technogenic civilization machineoriented, justified is the issue of revision of existing views about the current ideological approach to the basic concepts, components of a comprehensive scientific picture of the world. In this article, the authors examine biocentricity picture of the world in which the author focuses on the leading role of the life. It is concluded that a comprehensive summary of the lecture material various areas of scientific knowledge, contributes to the formation of metacognitive abilities of students in the course of studying the above disciplines.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Anna Thysiadou ◽  
Vasiliki Gaki

The introduction of the computer into the educational process is a fact. The educational use of new technologies creates a new, more appealing and enjoyable learning environment. The introduction of new technologies into school differentiates the role of the professor by giving him/her a guiding character in a process of experiential approach to knowledge. In the present paper a proposal for the teaching of the chemistry module “Simple Colloids” is presented, with the contribution of video recorded educational experiments. Complete experiments on the subject of “Simple Colloids” and their properties are presented, aiming at familiarizing students with this theory.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Wijaya

This study wanted to test the role of humor towards stress, with emotional intelligence as a mediator variable in adolescent. Research on humor in Indonesia has been done by involving the subject of a student who is writing a thesis, a student in the first year, a graduate student, as well as in middle adulthood. Based on this, researchers want to do further research to emphasize the role of humor with emotional intelligence as a mediator in adolescent. Research is done early in adolescent because the stressful sources of school and the peer group as part of the developmental tasks. Based on the results of this study found emotional intelligence has a role as a variable mediator of superiority humor and cognitive humor to stress. Keywords: Humor, emotional intelligence, stress, adolescent.


2017 ◽  
Vol II (I) ◽  
pp. 38-54
Author(s):  
Summaira Aziz ◽  
Fasih Ahmed ◽  
Momel Shehnaz

The study investigates attitudes of social and natural science students towards the practice of code switching by respective teachers at undergraduate level. For this purpose, Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) is applied. An adapted questionnaire of El-Fiki (1999) focused the advantages, disadvantages and CS practice as a helping tool in teaching methodology. The statistical results show a variation in the students’ attitudes based on gender, program and academic background. Furthermore, the results show that the students favor CS as it enhances the comprehension level of the students regarding the subject, they are enrolled in. The study concludes that teachers’ codeswitching proves helpful in achieving the academic goals.


Author(s):  
Kislay Kumar ◽  
Devesh Kumar ◽  
Pooja T. Pandey ◽  
Divya .

Background: tress at any stage of life virtually produces several respiratory limitations and reduces tolerance to physical efforts, sometimes leading to pulmonary diseases in individuals. Various yoga and Pranayama like Kapalbhati and Nadi-sodhan involves powerful strokes of exhalation, which trains the subject to make full use of diaphragm and abdominal muscles.Methods: This study is performed on 1st yr. medical students whose stress level is in higher side due to academic burden. 55 medical students were selected as participants through counseling and were divided into Yoga group (n= 27) and control group (n=28). Pulmonary functions of subjects were tested using Pony FX advanced desktop spirometer manufactured by Cosmed. Yoga is performed 1 hr/day for 6 days /week for 12 weeks by yoga group.Results: Pulmonary functions tested in Yoga and control group were FVC, FEV1, PEF and FVC/FEV1. There were significant improvements in pulmonary functions in yoga group. In Yoga group (FVC- 5.8% increases, FEV1- 5.2% increase, PEF- 34% increase and FVC/FEV1- 3.15% increase). In control group also, all parameters increased but P value was not significant.Conclusions: This study concludes that practicing Yoga has shown a significant improvement on pulmonary functions in 1st year medical students.


Proceedings ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (21) ◽  
pp. 1340
Author(s):  
María Isabel Rodríguez-Cáceres ◽  
Mónica Palomino-Vasco ◽  
María Victoria Gil Álvarez

The experience was carried out with the students of the optional subject “Wine and Health”, taught in 4th year of Degree of Oenology. This Degree has a low number of students, due to that, in the first year of teaching (2013/14) only three students enrolled in the subject, so we considered it was necessary to do something “different” to motivate students to enroll in this subject. This was carried out by inviting them to do a literature review on some topics, such as the relationship between moderate wine intake and Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Cancer or Allergy. In addition, they had to make an audiovisual presentation and expose it in the Conference of Viticulture and Oenology that are celebrated in Almendralejo (Badajoz, Spain), every year at the beginning of May. In general, after five years it has been observed that this methodology has increased the interest of students for this subject, which is reflected in more students in class, more class attendance and great interest. In addition, they have developed transversal skills such as public speaking, which has provided them with security and will probably be useful when conducting job interviews.


2009 ◽  
pp. 2029-2045
Author(s):  
Daniel Bolanos ◽  
Almudena Sierra

Due to the increasingly important role of software testing in software quality assurance, during the last several years, the utilization of automated testing tools, and particularly those belonging to the xUnit family, has proven to be invaluable. However, as the number of resources available continues increasing, the complexity derived from the selection and integration of the most relevant software testing principles, techniques and tools into an adequate learning environment for training computer science students in software testing, increases too. In this chapter we introduce a experience of teaching Software Testing for a senior-level course. In the elaboration of the course a wide variety of testing techniques, methodologies and tools have been selected and seamlessly integrated. An evaluation of students performance during the three academic years that the course has been held show that students’ attitudes changed with a high or at least a positive statistical significance.


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