Abstract:

Teachers at technical universities face a number of challenges when teaching mathematics for 21st century engineering students, as there have been enormous changes in engineering education in the last decade, which are affecting mathematical education at technical universities. The trend of declining mathematical knowledge and skills among students starting their studies at technical universities and the increasing variability of their knowledge have become a key challenge for mathematics teachers, as well as the trend of reducing ability of engineers to apply mathematics to solve technical problems. On the other hand, the rapid development of information technologies increases the demands on graduates of engineering studies in terms of their employment and effective practice of profession reflecting the rapidly changing society. In line with the above, there is a growing effort by teachers to develop innovative strategies and methods of teaching and learning mathematics for engineering students, in order to meet these challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic is accelerating these efforts.
The authors of the paper are interested in this actual and important problematic for many years. They focuses their attention on the identification and analysis of problems, specifics and needs associated with mathematics teaching at faculties of technical universities, firstly in an international context, then their attention is aimed to Slovakia and Czech Republic. Innovative methods used in mathematics teaching at technical universities (in STEM disciplines) are in the centre of attention, first of all the computer-based methods (CBMs), multidisciplinary approach (MDA) and student-centered curriculum (SCC). In order to increase the effectivity of teaching mathematics and prevent student failure during universities study, the empirical research was performed, in which the influence of the usage of innovative teaching methods on student’s results and their attitudes was studied. Based on the statistical analysis of experimentally obtained data we obtained original results, which confirmed the established research hypotheses, reflecting the importance of using innovative methods (CBMs, MDA, SCC) in teaching engineering mathematics in terms of increasing the performance and success of students during their studies.

Keywords:

Innovation, mathematical education, technical universities, STEM disciplines, empirical research, computer based methods, digital sources.