Abstract:

Nowadays, new technologies play an important role not only in industry, services, research and development, but also in education. Young people, having extensive digital skills, take advantage of possibilities that the online space offers, on a daily basis. In education, they are appreciating the availability of educational materials online what allows them to study efficiently whenever and wherever they want. Thus, blended learning as a combination of traditional and online education seems to be a suitable approach for educating young generation.

The subject Numerical methods and statistics is a compulsory subject in the second year of Bachelor’s studies at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Žilina. For this subject, there has been developed an e-course which is accessible for students via the university’s e-learning system. The e-course consists of texts for the lectures, exercises, instruction for work in the software Matlab, assignments of semester papers. The course materials are regularly updated and adapted to the requirements of the pedagogical process. During the Covid-19 pandemic, study materials have been supplemented with video recordings of lectures and a number of examples for self-paced study.

In the paper, we are providing a more detailed description of the e-course and the experiences of students with its use. In the anonymous evaluation, students stated that they had found the subject Numerical Methods and Statistics interesting and practical. Students' satisfaction with the quality of teaching, as well as with the availability of study materials, was over 80%.

Keywords:

e-learning course, new teaching methods, blended learning, statistics, numerical methods.