Abstract:

Each year more than three thousand freshman students at the TU Delft need to learn the basics of mathematics for engineers: Calculus, Linear Algebra and Probability & Statistics. At the end of 2014 the mathematics department of the TU Delft started a project to make these courses blended. The aim is to activate students from the start of each course by putting more emphasis on understanding the concepts, giving them more feedback on their learning and introducing more real-world examples relevant to their engineering. During the academic year 2015/2016 we started several pilots with blended learning. A learning cycle was designed to stimulate students to prepare for lectures via pre-lecture videos. In class students are actively learning by means of group quizzes and problem solving. The teacher explains the concepts introduced in the pre-lecture video further. After class students make homework assignments using an electronic system with examples, tips and feedback. With the help of applets they can deepen their knowledge and play with concepts like direction fields, complex numbers and contour maps. In one pilot nine teachers taught Calculus simultaneously in groups of forty students.

The presenter will:
(1) demonstrate the blended learning cycle;
(2) share the experiences, feedback of students and teachers, and results of the blended learning pilots;

Keywords:

Blended learning, mathematics, pre-lecture video, active learning, applets, flipped classroom.