Abstract:

Dynamic development in the area of information and communication technologies in recent years brings a lot of advantages and their wider application in production, technical and scientific areas. It means new challenges for the higher education area, which has to adequately react to this development to prepare experts capable to solve problems in practice individually without the need of further education in the form of training after starting new employment. It is obvious that this continuously accelerating process of development of new hardware means and software applications has to necessarily influence the educational area too.

One of the main goals of the paper is therefore to contribute to development of computer skills and professional competencies of students at technical universities as well as pedagogues with the emphasis on particular application areas of their utilization. It is evident that teaching of mathematics at technical universities has some specifics. There is necessary to develop students’s ability in applying of the acquired knowledge of mathematics in branches they are studied. Not only in engineering subjects during their studies at technical university, but moreover during a period of technical practice. Emphasizing the effectiveness of technical education at universities in conjunction with applicative character of mathematical disciplines, the paper presents the implementation of ICT as well as technical applications to the teaching of applied mathematics in the context of innovative approach to the teaching. Sometimes it is difficult to decide what kind of software is the most suitable to support teaching of mathematical subjects at technical universities. The chosen software should be applicable not only for specific tasks, should be available not only in PC laboratories at university, but also at home and for using in various subjects. Based on our many years of experience, some possibilities of using MATLAB and MS Excel in education of applied mathematics are presented in the article. Especially the role of visualization of solving some linear programming problems to find out optimum set of input variables (factors) to minimize costs or maximize benefits.

Application of advanced technologies, application of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) and software support of educational process will contribute to improvement and higher efficiency of teaching and it will lead to the increase of application character of mathematical subjects. It will be mainly an asset at solving individual seminar and semester works, diploma works in the area of optimization of mathematical-statistical models of selected technological processes.

Keywords:

Teaching, Software, Applied Mathematics, Optimization, Linnear programming.