First year students Aeronautical Engineering had the opportunity to enter a five days program to enhance their mathematical skills. The program had 55 participants. Our research questions were: What are the effects of participation in the summer school program on math skills? Do participants experience more motivation and academic self-esteem after participation? Do dropout rates differ between participating and non-participating students? Do participants differ from non-participating students in motivation or academic self-esteem? We presented the results at the European First Year Experience in Cork, Ireland.
This paper presents three lesson activities for upper secondary and higher education that focus on learning by constructing an interactive qualitative representation. By constructing the representation learners learn domain knowledge as well as general system thinking skills. The learning goals and the pedagogical approach are described.
In this paper, we focus on how the qualitative vocabulary of Dynalearn, which is used for describing dynamic systems, corresponds to the mathematical equations used in quantitative modeling. Then, we demonstrate the translation of a qualitative model into a quantitative model, using the example of an object falling with air resistance.