EVALUACIÓN DIAGNÓSTICA DEL BAJO DESEMPEÑO ACADÉMICO EN MATEMÁTICAS DE LOS ALUMNOS DE LA UPIICSA-IPN Y ALTERNATIVAS DE SOLUCIÓN

Abstract

SUMMARY The public and private productive sector demand better professionals that respond to their development and competitiveness needs for their products or services. For this, superior education institutions such as the UPIICSA from the IPN, restructure and update their study programs and plans on a permanent basis to train professionals to satisfy these needs of the productive sector. In the new professionals profiles of the Institutional Educative Model of the National Polytechnic Institute, knowledge, skills, aptitudes and attitudes are considered that graduates should have. Under this profile, the academic personnel are trained and updated according to their specialty area and prepare the necessary tools and didactic materials to deliver their chair. Among the subjects considered in the academic programs (study plans) of the five degrees that offers the Unit, are the basic sciences, being the mathematics a very important part of it. This science allows the student to develop a deductive logic thought for the comprehension, analysis and problem solutions related to his professional field. However, in spite of its importance, the failure rates are high, around 50% or more, which concerns to the academic authorities and teachers who taught this learning unit (subject). Before this situation, it was necessary to present a long reach research project to elaborate a diagnostic evaluation that allowed to identify some of the main causes of this problematic and to propose alternatives that contribute to improve the academic performance of the students in this important branch of the basic sciences. The overall objective of this project was to determine the main causes that affect the poor academic performance in mathematics of the students in the five different degrees of UPIICSA and propose alternative solutions. According to this objective, the following studies were conducted: The first study consisted in a diagnostic evaluation with representative samples of freshmen to the UPIICSA, from different school cycles, which allowed a comparative analysis to determine their attitude towards mathematics and their level of knowledge and dominion of basic mathematics, among other indicators of interest with some alternatives solutions to this problem. Additionally, and as a result of it, a didactic material was designed and elaborated for a Course-Workshop of Basic Mathematics as a pilot. The results of this one are presented in the section of Other Studies of Interest. The work of the second study emerges as a result of the high failure rates in the learning units (signatures) of Differential and Integral Calculus and Probability of the undergraduate students of Informatic Sciences and Informatic Engineering. This work was performed with a representative sample of the first semester students from both degrees of the school cycle 2005-2006, who answered a questionnaire to measure their poor performance in these signatures and determine the main causes and propose solutions. The third study was to apply a questionnaire to a representative sample of students from second to sixth semester of the school cycle 2009-2010 who take some of the mathematics signatures to determine, according to their perspective, the main causes of poor performance and propose solutions. The work of the fourth study was performed in the beginning of 2011, and may be one of the most interesting because it is referred to the professors’ opinion from the Academy of Mathematics of the UPIICSA, which with their teaching experience from several years, give their point of view of the main causes of poor performance of the students in mathematics and they propose alternative solutions. On the other hand, in the section of Other Studies of Interest, are presented, as an initial result of the suggested strategies of the first study, some of the formal actions oriented to improve the performance in mathematics of the students. One of these was a Course-Workshop of basic mathematics homogenization aimed to volunteer students from different semesters and careers with didactic material designed for this purpose. The results led to reflection and revision of the strategies. In this regard and based on these results of the Course-Workshop, for the first time a Course of Homogenization in Basic Mathematics was given to all freshmen to the UPIICSA with the didactic material designed for this purpose. The results, until certain point were encouraging because in the initial diagnostic test 8% approved, and in the end 40.5% approved. Finally, based on the results of the different studies conducted, the general conclusions and propose alternative solutions are presented