An innovative approach to computer mathematics teaching in a large engineering class

Abstract

This work describes the changes in a CU (curricular unit), Numerical Methods, that occurs in the second semester of the second year in the master’s programme of mechanical engineering, in 2020-2021. The methodology used in this CU was obsolete and has been taught with expositive classes and practical classes with little participation of the students. The big challenges are the dimension of the class (112 students), the lack of motivation to the subject of the CU and the fact that the CU appears very early in the teaching programme. This turned out to be even harder with the migration to online teaching, due to the pandemic and the uncertainty of the remaining of the semester (at this point we still don’t know if a blended learning system is going to be possible). The CU is working with some technological resources such as padlet, PollEv, BlackBoard and Ted Ed. The strategies being implemented are Problem-Based Learning (PBL), Audience Response Systems (ARS) and it has been used a partial flipped classroom strategy. Every week there are small videos available, to introduce the subjects and engage the students, and other videos are recorded in the Blackboard platform during the more expositive and complex parts of the classes, as well as exercises (by hand or in MATLABTM). In terms of assessment, there are weekly mini-tests, some of them in MATLABTM, preceded by a preparation quiz in the platform PollEv in a session before the class to maintain the students’ engagement. There is a small project in MATLABTM where the students in teams are encouraged to search for an applied problem from the real world in the suggested routine. There are two planned faceto-face tests, one of them already took place. In the practical classes, the students are divided in smaller classes, where they can practice with the teacher (these classes had now migrated to a face-to-face scenario). The results until this point are very promising, with a wide participation of the students and excellent scores in the mini-tests.