Enhancing Mathematical Skills By The Use Of Virtual Instruments

AbstractMathematics is often considered difficult by students, consequently it appears as an unattractive curricular element and a kind of blockage occurs in the learning process. This happens because some aspects are (at least) presented in an abstract way, the students having not the possibility to visualize the results or to interpret/link these results with known aspects from the real life. A good way to visualize results of mathematical concepts and results is their presentation in a graphical way; this is possible to be realized using different dedicated software, but also by constructing virtual instruments. The use of these last tools is motivated by the fact that the experience reveals the attractiveness of computers and programming languages in education. This is amplified by the fact that programming develops the ability of thinking and structural organizing of activities and actions, and involves in our case the use of functions and relations in a logical sentence. While the results are visible and the facility to simply modify the input parameters is assured, the effect on outputs is clearly shown by the Virtual Instrument. This approach is proven as successful in enhancing mathematical skills for students in the engineering domains, the target of our research group being the development of Virtual Instruments for all topics taught in mathematics. Some of them are presented at the end of the paper