IMPROVING THE TEACHING OF ENGINEERING MATHEMATICS: A RESEARCH PLAN AND WORK IN PROCESS REPORT

teaching has been an active field of development in the past few years. New engineering students have been tested by the basic skill test of mathematics in autumns of 2008 and 2009 and the test will be used also in autumn 2010. The test was based on a similar test used in Tampere University of Technology. It includes randomized questions covering the most important high school topics. Last autumn we also sent a link to a learning styles questionnaire to all students who made the basic skill test. The questionnaire was based on Felder's Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire. Results of the questionnaire were compared to the results of the basic skill test. In the future we will send an inquiry form to a sample of students who succeeded weakly in their mathematics studies and in the basic skill test. The questionnaire includes questions about their mathematics study experiences. After we have analysed the results of the questionnaire we will interview more precisely a few interesting cases. The results of the basic skill test have shown that students have some learning gaps in mathematics. Difficult topics are for example trigonometry and logarithms. However, while there was a significant correlation to th