The COVID pandemic has touched many aspects of everyone’s life. Education is one of the fields greatly affected by it, as students and teachers were forced to move online and quickly adapt to the online environment. Assessment is a crucial part of education, especially in STEM fields. A gap analysis was performed by expert groups in the frame of an Erasmus+ project looking at the practices of six European countries. Specialists teaching university-grade mathematics in seven European institutions were asked about their perception of gaps in the assessment of students both before (2019) and during (2021) the pandemic. This qualitative study looks at the difference in perception of such gaps after almost one year of online teaching. The analysis of their responses showed that some gaps were present before the pandemic, as well as others that are specific to it. Some gaps, such as the lack of IT infrastructure and the need to adapt materials to an online environment, have been exacerbated by the outbreak.
This paper presents a hybrid evolutionary algorithm for the two-dimensional non-guillotine packing problem. The problem consists of packing many rectangular pieces into a single rectangular sheet in order to maximize the total area of the pieces packed. Moreover, there is a constraint on the maximum number of times that a piece may be used in a packing pattern. The set of packing patterns is processed by an evolutionary algorithm. Three mutation operators and two types of quality functions are used in the algorithm. The best solution obtained by the evolutionary algorithm is used as the initial solution in a tree search improvement procedure. This approach is tested on a set of benchmark problems taken from the literature and compared with the results published by other authors.
The goal of this paper is to introduce a technique of creating self-tests that has allowed to actively incorporate university students into the learning process. The study was conducted within the framework of the Erasmus + Project EngiMath. Partners' peer reviews, the survey results and the students' comments in forums and test results were used to conduct the research. The students' overall satisfaction was in a high level. However, opportunities for some technical improvement has been emerged like the formulation of the tasks needs to be very clear and the time required to perform the tests must be limited. The following conclusions can be drawn from the study. The use of self-tests at all stages of training has intensified the assimilation of the material, i.e. increased understanding of theoretical material and developed computational skills. By completing a series of such assignments on each topic of the course, students had mastered the methodology of studying the topic and mastered specific teaching material on this topic. Feedback made, taking into account typical errors, has allowed the students to analyse their knowledge. A large number of variations for such tasks has allowed students to be involved in the process of active independent and individualized self-study.
The fast evolution of distance learning tools such as Open Educational Resources (OER)) is an evidence of a shift in the way teaching and learning are understood. Several Higher Education Institutions are trying to increase their efficiency, competitiveness and expand their potential public by investing in the development of online courses, which can offer more interaction and support and be accessible to a larger number of students from a wider sort of backgrounds. The adaptation of a face-to face course into an online one is not simple, as it is not just about uploading lecture videos, sets of notes or lessons, it is necessary to consider the student's needs, the instructional design and the best digital educational tools in order to support learning and teaching process.A partnership between Higher Education Institutions from six European countries, connecting more than twenty lecturers from distinct knowledge areas, is working on a European Erasmus+ Project, EngiMath, Mathematics online learning model in engineering education. These are developing a shared online platform for teachers to teach Mathematics in the first years of Engineering degrees and, on the other hand, to support student-centric learning and to encourage students to actively engage in the learning process to construct their own learning, addressing the recent requirements for an open, independent, competitive and innovative education. In this context, several new methodological and development issues of the online course will be presented, as well as students' perceptions and feedback about the pilot course conducted by each institution partner of the project.
Although Mathematics is a pillar which many of the subjects of any Engineering degree are based on, and in spite of being used as a tool in almost all of such subjects, it is sometimes difficult for students to assimilate the mathematical concepts. Since this relationship between Engineering and Mathematics is unavoidable, a consortium of universities from different countries is working on a project, EngiMath, to, on the one hand, make it easier for teachers to teach Mathematics in the first years of Engineering degrees; and, on the other hand, to promote study from a “student-centric” point of view. As a previous step to the development of educational material that fulfills these purposes, a study of the students' feelings about Mathematics and their experience in studying them has been carried out.
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