SELF-ASSESSMENT OF THEIR NEEDS IN MATHEMATICS FOR THE STUDENTS WHO ENTER ENGINEERING CAREERS

First year students of technical engineering come, in most cases, from studies in the secondary school that do not have mathematics in their curricula, so, their mathematical baggage is really poor. Nevertheless they apply and access to technical engineering studies, which curricula assumes that students must master certain concepts in Algebra and Calculus.

To analyse this problem, in a previous work, we designed a simple questionnaire where the students in the first year of Agricultural Engineering in the University Jaume I of Castellón, should self-evaluate (in a scale form 0 to 10) their knowledge on different mathematical subjects. They were asked to self evaluate their global knowledge in Mathematics and in Physics and their knowledge of different mathematical disciplines. This questionnaire was undertaken on the first week of the student in the University.

As a result of this first study, we concluded that for our students, to have a good mathematical background means to be competent with: basic algebra, solving equations and, solving systems of linear equations; and is completely uncorrelated with being competent on working with: functions, graphics, limits, derivatives and integrals, it is said, on those variables which are the basic background of Calculus. These results indicate that the mathematical basis of our students is really poor, and what is worse, that they do not consider that should have some minimum knowledge on the different disciplines to access a technical engineer.

Our aim in this work is to get a larger data set to be able to confirm the conclusions stated in the previous project, and to analyze how to adapt the teaching-learning process to the reality of the classroom. To know the weaknesses of the students, becomes an essential tool for our daily teaching practice and for planning the new subjects in their future curricula.