The impact of lecture notes on an engineering student's understanding of mathematical concepts

Engineering students’ instrumental approaches to mathematics; some positive characteristics

“…This statement adds to the interviewed students' opinions about formalism and theory being neither intelligible nor relevant to their learning of mathematics. A similar reluctance to formal mathematical arguments was discovered when analysing an engineering student's lecture notes (Rensaa, 2014). The student frequently added explanations to symbols occurring in the notes, using her own words to clarify the meaning.…”

“…Students have problems with decoding symbols because they read the symbols themselves without trying to grasp the meaning of them (Pimm, 1987), and the preference to lecture notes in mathematics is documented (Anthony, 2000;Bergsten, 2011;Randahl, 2012;Rensaa, 2014). Notes are often shorter and straighter to the point, which is appreciated by many students.…”

En tematisk analyse av hva ingeniørstudenter gjør når de lærer lineær algebra

“…Dataene i Bergstens undersøkelse peker på at det å ta notater er en vesentlig gevinst av en forelesning (2011). Det har også vaert mulig å identifisere notatenes innflytelse på en students løsning av matematiske problemer (Rensaa, 2014), men som belyst i Rensaa (2014), konkluderer forskningslitteraturen litt ulikt når det gjelder laeringseffekten av slike notater. Forelesningsformen i seg selv står også for hogg, og det reises tvil om dens utbytte generelt (Folley, 2010).…”

Bill’s Rationales for Learning Mathematics in Prison

“…While Mellin-Olsens work is still frequently cited, few researchers have put his work to use by operationalizing it methodologically. Besides a few short conference papers, the few exceptions we have found include Goodchild (1997), who examines rationales in a grade 10 class over one year with ethnographic methods, and Rensaa (2014), who uses the development of students' rationales for evaluating an intervention in engineering degree mathematics. The novelty of our approach consists of operationalizing Mellin-Olsens rationales to analyse students' mathematical experience through interview data.…”