DEVELOPMENT OF MATHEMATICAL SKILLS DURING NUMERICAL RESOLUTION OF INITIAL VALUE PROBLEMS

The general training of a professional and, specifically, the improvement of professional skills is one of the considerable challenges of Higher Education. Some authors argue that important contributions to this process can already be made in the early basic subjects. Specifically, in engineering careers, from the earliest starting point of the instructing of scientific subjects, teachers have been trying to achieve one goal: experts whose preparation is in accordance with the developments taken place in their own times.

In order for students to develop different skills during the learning of methods for solving Initial Value Problems (IVP), technological resources generated with Mathematica software were designed for using in both theoretical and practical classroom development. The design of these resources took into account the difficulties that are usually detected in learning about the subject and the established learning expectations.

The classification of the mathematical skills considered is that given by the revised Bloom taxonomy. This taxonomy distinguishes six levels that the student must overcome in order for a genuine learning process to take place. They are: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create.

Keeping in mind the end goal to analyze the mathematical skills achieved by the students during their learning, different evaluative instances were proposed where the students needed to utilize the assets specified above so as to understand the proposed exercises.

The target of this paper is to show the outcomes acquired by applying this work methodology and to present some conclusions drawn from the survey that was carried out to measure the impact of technological resources on students students in Numerical Analysis courses at Facultad Regional San Nicolás, Universidad Tecnológica Nacional from Argentina, during their learning process.