Situated mathematics teaching within electrical engineering courses

Abstract

The initial phase of undergraduate engineering degree programmes often comprises courses requiring mathematical expertise which in some cases clearly exceeds school mathematics, but will be imparted only later in mathematics courses. In this article, an approach addressing this challenge by way of example within a fundamentals of electrical engineering course is presented. The concept focuses on gaining specific mathematical knowledge and competencies in the technical context of this course. For this purpose, a complementary blended learning scenario centring around a web-based learning platform and involving an adaptation of the course was developed. The concept particularly considers the heterogeneity of today's student groups and is discussed with regard to related approaches, didactical considerations, and technical implementation. For the interventions, the results of a questionnaire-based evaluation proving students' acceptance and positive influence on examination performance are presented.

Keywords:

• undergraduate engineering mathematics
• teaching electrical engineering
• situated learning
• e-learning
• blended learning
• wiki

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge partial funding of this work by the Stiftung Mercator and VolkswagenStiftung within the initiative ‘Bologna – Zukunft der Lehre’.

About the authors

Markus Hennig received his Diploma in electrical engineering in 2010 from the University of Paderborn, where he is currently working as a research assistant and Ph.D. candidate. He is with the cognitive systems engineering group (GET Lab) and the German Centre for Higher Mathematics Education (KHDM). His research interests include (undergraduate) engineering education and e-learning.

Bärbel Mertsching studied electrical engineering and obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Paderborn. Between 1994 and 2003, she was professor of computer science at the University of Hamburg. In 2003, she returned to the University of Paderborn where she is professor of electrical engineering and head of the cognitive systems engineering group (GET Lab). Furthermore, she is with the German Centre for Higher Mathematics Education (KHDM). Besides her research interests in computer vision and robotics, she has been working on interventions for improvement of engineering education in several projects.

Frederic Hilkenmeier studied psychology at the University of Hamburg and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Paderborn in 2012. He is currently working in the department of work- and organisational psychology on projects dealing with competence-oriented student assessment and informal learning.