Attitudes of First Year Students Towards Studying Mathematics

First-year students have to deal with a variety of challenges, i.e. to adapt to the requirements of the new studying environment and various styles of teaching as well as diverse methods of assessment, e.g. tests, short investigations, written assignments, etc. The majority of students find this adaptation to be difficult. Taking this into consideration, studying Mathematics also has its own specificities and peculiarities. The non-engineering specialties have a small number of academic credits for studying Mathematics during the first semester of the first year of studies at Aleksandras Stulginskis University. However, this course is quite extensive, i.e. it includes the basic topics of Advanced Mathematics and it has its learning continuity. Moreover, studying Mathematics requires active participation in the lectures and consistent self-study. The lecturer’s role is to engage students, to explain and to teach how to study Mathematics effectively. The generation of nowadays students is the generation of technologies, thus any result should preferably be achieved automatically and quickly. However, we encounter the problem of incapability and inability to use Mathematical literature. A survey was carried out at the end of the semester to find out the consistency of students’ studying, the attendance, the use of literature and the amount of time spent on self-studying and its efficiency. Furthermore, students expressed their opinion on the quality of teaching. The article introduces the method of teaching Mathematics using mini-tests which aims at ensuring and verifying students’ self-studying. What is more, it discusses the findings of the survey which characterize the students’ attitudes towards studying Mathematics. It also analyses the factors which interfere with studying Mathematics as well as the ones which determine its better resultsVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŽemės ūkio akademij