Mathematical tools for evaluating the new teaching and learning ...

Mathematical tools for evaluating the new teaching and learning methodsÓscar Angulo Torga, Eduardo Cuesta MonteroDepartment of Applied Mathematics to Technical EngineeringUniversity of Valladolid, Spaine-mail: oscarat@mat.uva.es, eduardo@mat.uva.es1.- AbstractNew methods and technologies are being used more and more in Universitary teaching andlearning, but not always the results are evaluated, and when they are evaluated, not always with themost suitable mathematical tools.The aim of the present comunication is to show several examples of mathematical tools developedin the Department of Applied Mathematics to Technical Engineering programmed on MATLAB,with the objective of evaluating our teaching and learning activity.2.- Main objectivesNovadays, the most of the Universities are involved at the present into an evaluating proccess andwe have an important role in this process one.In addition to the official evaluating procces, the Department of Applied Mathematics to theTechnics has some experiences about, with the objective of evaluate:–the quality of the matters, of the contents,..–the quality of the professor–the quality of the tools used in the teaching–the quality of the services of the UniversityThis experiences started some time ago with non-official courses and now we will purpose this inofficial courses.3.- Mathematical toolsThe mathematical tool used to develop these evaluations is the well known mathematical softwareMATLAB ® , but why? Mainly, this choose is due to the following–It's very widely distributed in the universitary context.–It permits us to design and program friendly graphical interfaces to be used by anynonexpert in MATLAB ® person.–It's very simple to introduce small changes to use it in our own context.–It's possible to use the wide statistical toolboxes for analizing results, and in this wayto obtain rigorous conclusions, graphical results...Still more, working like us, under some kind of network, we are able to compile the data of theevaluation and analyze them just in time. Our own network server works under the operative systemLINUX and permits to do it.In particular, the technical support available in our Department is:–MATLAB ® 6.5

–LINUX Red Hat, release 7.1 installed on a Pentium 3.–24 personal computers4.- MethodolgySeveral years teaching introductory courses on MATLAB ® give us some experience on thepossibilities of MATLAB ® in educational context, in particular, in the context of the teachingevaluation. In this way several works was directed by us related to the programming educationaltools under MATLAB ® .Next steps was several evaluations in nonoffical courses, always applying mathematical toolsdeveloped by us under MATLAB ® . Year after year these evaluations have been improved in thefollowing sense:–More friendy and complete graphical interface.–Better list of questions (more questions, more precise questions, more interestingquestions,...)Actually we are working in an educational project supported by La Junta de Castilla y León in orderto continue improving this tools.5.- ResultsNext we will show how is the presentation of this tools by means of severals screen of it. Morecomplete understanding of this tool will be reached by means of a personal comunications

6.- ConclusionsMATLAB ® permits us to develop mathematical tools by means of friendly graphical interfaces toevaluate the teaching activity with mathematical rigor, easily transformable and, when a network isavailable, permits us to obtain the final results just in time.7.- References–Óscar Angulo, Eduardo Cuesta, César Gutiérrez, Carmen Martínez}, Guía Rápida de MATLAB ® ,IICE, 2001.–Adrian Biran, Moshe Breinner, MATLAB ® for Engineers, Addison-Wesley, 1997. S.J. Chapman,MATLAB ® Programming for Engineers, Brooks & Cole, 2000.–Walter Gander, Jiri Hrebicek, Solving Problems in Scientific Computing Using MAPLE andMATLAB ® , Springer, 1997.–Eva Part-Enander, Anders Sjoberg, The MATLAB ® handbook, Addison-Wesley, 1996.– César Pérez, Matem\'atica Informatizada con MATLAB ® , ra-ma, 1996.–Peregrina Quintela, Introducci\'on a MATLAB ® y sus aplicaciones, Universidad de Santiago deCompostela, 1997.–Redfern, D, The MATLAB ® 5 Handbook, Springer, 1997.–Kermit Sigmon, MATLAB ® Primer (Fifth Edition), CRC Press, 1998 .–Aprenda MATLAB ® 5.3, Como si Estuviera en Primero, Universidad de Navarra, 1999.–www.mathworks.com