Study of modeling questions in a first-year university mathematics online course

Abstract

The training of non-specialists, particularly engineers, in mathematics requires designing specific didactic proposals that make the importance of mathematics evident. One approach to creating such proposals consists in analyzing the mathematics used in authentic contexts of engineering research and then effectuating a didactic transposition to mathematics teaching. To this end, in this research, we use elements of the anthropological theory of the didactic and the methodology of didactic engineering. Initially, we analyze the blind source separation method, a case of inverse modeling widely used in numerous engineering contexts (e.g., telecommunications, acoustics, geophysics, biosignal analysis). More specifically, we examine the algorithm based on the Ax= b matrix model and its use in a signal processing context. Based on this analysis, we designed a didactic device that focuses the study on a simulated signal mixture of pure tones and implemented it in two first-year university mathematics courses in the virtual modality. This article reports the results of the students’ first approximation to mathematical modeling activity in a setting of authentic research in engineering using a blind source separation method.