Abstract:

Along time it has been appreciated that most of the students who access the first academic year, do not have the necessary knowledge to use basic computer tools. As it is known, this knowledge is essential to understand and overcome different subjects throughout their career. One of these tools is Microsoft Excel. Besides, Computer Basics (CB) is one of the first-year subjects involved in the Mining Engineering degree at University of Oviedo (UO), whose contents includes an introduction to logic and information representation, data bases design principles and an introduction to programming, but also include hardware overview, operating systems and utility software. Thus, the aims of this study were first to reinforce previous knowledge about spreadsheets (SP), and secondly to introduce new elements and methods in order to improve solutions to addressed problems. To do so, transversal knowledge covered in first-courser’s subjects (Business and Mechanical and Thermodynamics) were employed to provide practical problems to solve with SP.

As we expected the project to be accepted after the start of the course, a first release of the exercises was to be developed by the CB teaching staff. This release of the exercises included:
i) the installation of Solver in SP and
ii) some trivial exercises where one parameter optimization and up to four parameters optimization must be solved.

The developed teaching material explained how to install the EXCEL complements for optimization and the minimum configuration to run. Then, a very simple problem related with the different linear movement’s laws was proposed, which is part of the curricula in High School. For this problem, the challenge was to find the crossing point of two vehicles in opposite direction. The second problem was much harder as it was designed as a complement of a previous EXCEL exercise. In this second case, several variables were organized in columns and the challenge was to find out the linear relationship between several variables and the target one.

Several problems related to the contents of the subject Mechanics and Thermodynamics were selected in order to be solved using EXCEL. The Hooke’s law experiment performed in the laboratory sessions was chosen, and real data are given to find the relationship between elongation of a spring and weight of a hanging mass. The second problem is based on the simple harmonic motion produced when the mass is gently pulled down and starts oscillating. A third problem is based in the harmonic behaviour of position and velocity of a sinusoidal movement. The last problem deals with the important concepts of energy conservation in the particular case of a projectile motion. Data have to be calculated using EXCEL, and several graphs can be sketched from these data.

A two-hour laboratory session was devoted to solve the installation of the Solver in EXCEL and solving the two exercises. At the end of the class the students were requested to voluntarily fill a simple questionnaire with 3 questions, one of them was optional. Up to 15 out of 19 students filled the questionnaire. The answers showed the vast majority of the students were able to install the tools and to solve the first exercise, many of them also solve the second exercise. More interestingly, the students rated the experience as highly valuable (8.2 out of 10), which encourages us to continue providing this type of exercises to other parts, such as data bases design.

Keywords:

Content Coordination, Transversal Learning, Learning by doing.