Dublin Institute of Technology offers students a number of different routes into engineering, allowing many non-standard entrants the opportunity to study the discipline provided they fulfil certain criteria. The final aim of many of these students is to achieve an Honours Degree in Engineering, which takes a minimum of 4 years. Apart from the…

The next edition of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) Mathematics Working Group's curriculum document will be based on the notion of mathematical competence. This approach aims particularly to capture higher-level learning goals that go beyond the traditional content-related and often small-scale description of learning…

A study was conducted at the Technical University Berlin involving students who twice failed the written examination in the first semester course Linear Algebra for Engineers in order to better understand the reasons behind their failure. The study considered student understanding in terms of Bloom's taxonomy and the ways in which students…

Competency has been the buzzword of higher education for at least a decade. The reasonable approach of describing what students should be able to do after completing coursework, however, falls short of the fact that mathematics, like any subject matter, contains inherent difficulties for students. Students usually need assistance in overcoming…

In this article we report and discuss a contextual problem solving task that was proposed to a class of 8th grade (13-14-year-old) students. These students had been developing a reasonable experience in the use of the spreadsheet to model relations within contextual problems and chose to use this tool to solve the mentioned problem, engaging in…

In this article, we show a dynamic graphic in Excel that is used to introduce an important concept in our subject, Statistics I: the probability density function. This interactive graphic seeks to facilitate conceptual understanding of the main aspects analysed by the learners.

This article considers the role of socio-cognitive conflict in addressing students' mechanics preconceptions. A discussion problem was posed to sixth-form students taking an introductory mechanics unit. The problem involved a child choosing either to slide down a smooth slide or to jump off the top. Students were invited to predict which route…

The article discusses aspects of approaches taken to increase engagement using interactive teaching elements and includes survey results from consecutive sets of student cohorts who have trialled resources contained in an Electronic Student Toolkit for Engagement in Engineering Mathematics under development at the University of Leeds. The survey…

Teaching mathematics associated with the repaying of loans has always been an awkward task--it seems superficially easy, but it contains pitfalls both for the learner and for the unwary teacher. This short article reviews some of the mathematics, and notes an interesting result.

Engineering Students Understanding Mathematics (ESUM) is a developmental research project at a UK university. The motivating aim is that engineering students should develop a more conceptual understanding of mathematics through their participation in an innovation in teaching. A small research team has both studied and contributed to innovation,…

With the London 2012 Olympics coming up, now is a good time for teachers to turn to track and field athletics for an application that has the potential to be intrinsically interesting to many pupils in schools new undergraduates. In this article, curves, well-known amongst former generations of pupils, are revisited by looking at the markings on…

Much research and many papers on mathematics pedagogy have discussed assessment and, in particular, the need to provide a varied diet of methods by which students are assessed for the award of their degree. In this article, we explore the mix of assessment methods provided across a range of UK university mathematics departments. We examine the…

This article describes an activity that can be carried out in one of the final classes of Italian secondary schools. The aim of the activity is to stimulate pupil curiosity, demonstrating that Mathematics is not a barren subject and allowing the students, according to an interdisciplinary point of view, to investigate some literary works and the…

Damped harmonic oscillations appear naturally in many applications involving mechanical and electrical systems as well as in biological systems. Most students are introduced to harmonic motion in an elementary ordinary differential equation (ODE) course. Solutions to ODEs that describe simple harmonic motion are usually found by investigating the…

This article adapts the problem-solving model developed by Polya to investigate and give an innovative approach to discuss and solve an optimization problem in geometry: the Regiomontanus Problem and its application to football. Various mathematical tools, such as calculus, inequality and the properties of circles, are used to explore and reflect…