Mario Sánchez Aguilar

An exploratory study of how undergraduate students use official statistics as a source of information for their academic assignments

The official statistics generated by government offices and ministries are fundamental to guide actions in the decisionmaking process within a country. For example, official statistics could be used to promote and allocate public goods like local, regional and national budgets. Moreover, due to the high quality standard required to generate official data, such information is ideal to promote a better understanding about the important facts in economic, sociodemographic, geographic, environmental and governmental management issues. However, it has been observed that many undergraduate students do not use such data in an extensive manner, and they reveal limitations in accessing, analyzing and extrapolating such information to their benefit, both in academic and personal settings. The aim of this work is to describe to what extent Mexican undergraduate students use official statistics as part of their academic assignments, and to identify the main obstacles they encounter when trying to access and use official statistics.

Digital Technology in Mathematics Education: Research over the Last Decade

In this survey paper we focus on identifying recent advances in research on digital technology in the field of mathematics education. We have used Internet search engines with keywords related to mathematics education and digital technology and have reviewed some of the main international journals. We identify five sub-areas of research, important trends of development, and illustrate them using case studies: mobile technologies, massive open online courses (MOOCs), digital libraries and designing learning objects, collaborative learning using digital technology, and teacher training using blended learning. These exemplary case studies may help the reader to understand how recent developments in this area of research have evolved in the last few years. We conclude the report discussing some of the implications that these digital technologies may have for mathematics education research and practice as well as making some recommendations for future research in this area.

Identificación de estrategias en un juego bipersonal entre estudiantes universitarios

espanolEl proposito de este manuscrito es ampliar nuestro conocimiento acerca de las potencialidades que ofrece el uso de juegos de estrategia, para promover habilidades utiles en la resolucion de problemas. Se reportan los resultados de un estudio a nivel universitario sobre la practica del juego bipersonal “circulo de monedas”. Para ello se analizaron las partidas de cuatro jugadores. Los principales resultados del articulo son: 1) se identifican estrategias utilizadas por los estudiantes al intentar ganar, 2) se identifican las condiciones bajo las cuales surgen dichas estrategias y 3) se argumenta como la practica de juegos de estrategia podria favorecer el desarrollo de heuristicas utiles en la resolucion de problemas. EnglishThe purpose of this manuscript is to increase our knowledge about the potential offered by the use of strategy games to promote useful skills in problem solving. We report the results of a study conducted at the undergraduate, where students engaged in a two-player game called “circle of coins”. We analyze the games played by four students. The main contributions include are: 1) identifying the specific strategies used by each of the players to try to win the games and 2) the conditions under which these strategies arose. In addition, 3) we argued that the practice of strategy games could encourage the development of heuristics useful in solving mathematical problems.