| Autor: |
Jackman, Susan, Goldfinch, Judy, Searl, John |
| Předmět: |
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| Zdroj: |
International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science & Technology; Mar2001, Vol. 32 Issue 2, p175-187, 13p, 8 Charts |
| Abstrakt: |
Various factors were considered by lecturers at two neighbouring universities wishing to devise appropriate and relevant assessments for first-year service mathematics courses for science and engineering. These factors included the changing mathematical background of entrant students, their attitudes to mathematics and their difficulties in applying mathematics. The response was to introduce extended investigative tasks but in different formats at the two universities. At the new university, a single group project was set but at the ancient university ten individual tasks were set spread through the year. This paper describes the introduction and the evaluation of the effectiveness of the tasks. The aspects which were studied in the evaluation included the effect of tasks on attitudes to mathematics, on students' examination results and on their ability to apply mathematics in context. Factors which influenced students' performance in their mathematics course were identified and errors made in examination scripts were studied in detail and classified as being either errors in basic 'school-level' mathematics or errors in using mathematics taught in the current course. Some interesting facts about students' attitudes to mathematics arose particularly in relation to their entrance qualifications and some tentative conclusions about the success of the tasks were reached. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
| Databáze: |
Complementary Index |
| Externí odkaz: |
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