L. M. Sánchez Ruiz

Work in progress: Blended learning activities development

The upcoming of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has brought out a transformation towards more student centered methodologies which go in the line of much more than catching up with the nowadays times and the uprising of the digital new technologies. Encouraging active learning and entrepreneurship are in the skeleton of competencies that the new engineer must achieve for several reasons. Ideas and solutions to new challenges quite often require creative and innovative engineers that have to catch up with a resilient society where environment and conditions are continuously changing. This contrasts with the traditional input-oriented approach to higher education focusing on the transmission of defined curriculum content. Thus there is need to get even further of a learning outcomes orientation, focusing on what the student is expected to know, understand and be able to do. The shift towards a learning outcomes approach is really a major cultural transformation that is taking time to become fully implemented. In order to tackle this issue from the first stages of a just newcomer university student, the authors propose an active methodology in Mathematics theoretical classes for Aerospace Engineering students that provides activities to be developed by them before each theoretical and problem solving exam comes as part of their apprenticeship. In this way the students are faced in front of activities designed to develop their competencies achievement by promoting their deep understanding of the subject and having to confront their engineering skills while learning a basic subject such as Mathematics. Since these activities are not developed in a controlled environment, students must perform an individual test at the time of delivery to check their authorship and understanding of the processes developed at their activities.

Blended learning at maths with aerospace engineering freshmen

Instructing mathematics to engineering freshmen is a challenge not only because of their diverse backgrounds but also because of their high skills in digital technology. For this reason, a new approach has been considered in Aerospace Engineering at Technical University of Valencia (UPV) which, in addition to master classes, includes assignments specially designed to achieve mathematical competencies in the first year. These assignments reinforce the learning process of students and increase their competencies before each assessment test. On the other hand PoliformaT, an educational platform developed by UPV, and based on the Sakai project, has facilitated to develop a flipped teaching methodology in the one hour lab sessions in the first year of Aerospace Engineering. Thus a blended learning methodology, a combination of computer technologies and face-to-face classes, has provided very good learning outcomes results for Spanish standards. We present some results concerning our first year Mathematics course in Aerospace Engineering and the opinion of the students about this blended learning methodology.

Sequential convergence in topological vector spaces

Abstract In this paper we study some properties of the topological vector spaces which are sequentially maximal.

Is there a gender difference in Maths competencies achievement between Aerospace Engineering students in Spain

The NSF has recently issued the report on “Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering” which provides statistical information about the participation of these three groups in science, engineering education and employment. The percentages in Spain, and particularly in the Technical University of Valencia where almost all degrees are technologically related, are not very different even though there is a general feeling in Spanish society to consider engineering studies to be appealing and with high employability possibilities. In this paper we analyze how they perform inside the university in a highly technological degree as Aerospace Engineering. We present their results corresponding to competencies achievement in each gender group and each topic of these Mathematics subjects.

Whole mathematics competences assessment at aerospace engineering sophomore

Mathematics background of Engineering students changes drastically between freshmen and sophomore students. This brings out the way in which lab sessions are incorporated must be taken into account as well in the continuous assessment of the subject being a key issue how to incorporate the assessment of lab sessions. At the Higher Technical School of Design Engineering of the Universität Politècnica of Valencia (UPV) we started using CAS almost 20 years ago and have evolved from the initial lab sessions and their corresponding evaluation. Our learning tells us that the final approach depends on the content of the subject and how relevant are the methods used as well as the capabilities of the CAS used. In addition, the standard use of assignments to reinforce the learning process of each student has also shown to be a keystone to increase the Engineering students competences before each assessment test. Results will be presented concerning a second year Mathematics course in Aerospace Engineering where 100% students attendance was achieved at the end of the third semester, all of them taking all exams, and where we experienced a success rate above 91% which is far of being standard at Spanish Engineering studies.

Preliminary analysis of an appealing program for outstanding students at the school of design engineering (ETSID) of Valencia

During the 2010/2011 academic year, the Universities of the Valencia region (Spain) started up a pioneer experience in Spanish Higher Education: the High Academic Performance Groups (in Spanish, the so-called ARA groups “Grupos de Alto Rendimiento Académico”) aiming to support and attract the brightest students with the best skills, so that they can achieve a high academic performance. The Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), as a result of its commitment to promote its quality and internationalization, has taken part in this project from the dawn of its implementation. Since then, ARA groups have been set up in five of the UPV Bachelor Degrees, two of them being offered at the School of Design Engineering (ETSID). In this work, we analyse the implementation process of the ARA groups at ETSID since 2010/2011, outlining some of the future strategies that should be taken into account for their consolidation.

Modelling of Spikes and Mathematica in Dynamical Systems

Modelling of practical situations in which spikes do appear leads to the use of delta generalizad functions. Many of them are properly handled by means of the symbolic character of Mathematica. In this note we will point out how these functions are properly handled when are involved as inputs in some practical modelizations of dynamic systems.

Buchwalter-Schmets theorems and linear topologies

In this paper, we obtain Buchwalter-Schmets theorems in the realm of Lefschetz linearly topologized spaces.

Note on pointwise contractive projections

Let C(X) be the space of real-valued continuous functions on a Hausdorff completely regular topological space X. endowed with the compact-open topology. In this paper necessary and sufficient conditions are given for a subspace of C(X) to be the range of a pointwise contractive projection in C(X).