Analysis of factors influencing students' access to mathematics education in the form of MOOC

Restricting the movement of students because of COVID-19 requires expanding the offer of online education. Online education should reflect the principles of pedagogical constructivism to ensure the development of students' cognitive and social competencies. The paper describes the preparatory course of mathematics, realized in the form of MOOC. This course was created and implemented based on the principles of pedagogical constructivism. The analysis of the respondents' approach to MOOC revealed a difference between bachelor and master students in the use of MOOC. Bachelors found a strong correlation between their approach to MOOCs and the way they are educated in secondary schools. The results of the research point to the need of more emphasis should be placed on advancing the learner's skills in navigating and analysing information. The questionnaire filled in by the participants also monitored the students' access to learning. The results of the experiment confirmed the connection between the preferred approach to learning and students' activities within the MOOC. © 2020 by the authors

Setting up a flipped classroom design to reduce student academic procrastination

The transfer of educational activities to the online environment within blended learning, which was also accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, increases the risk of growing student procrastination. This article describes the design of the flipped class, which is designed so that students are supported and motivated to continuously perform individual tasks. Great emphasis in the described design of the flipped classroom is placed on supporting students in their activities outside the classroom. It is in this part of blended learning that procrastination is a frequent cause of students’ failure, not just in mathematics. The effectiveness of our proposed inverted class design has been experimentally verified. Statistical analysis of the data showed that students had a statistically significant reduction in procrastination behavior during the course of the experiment. The proposed flipped classroom design has the potential to increase students’ self-regulatory skills, which has been reflected in a change in their approach to learning responsibilities. Students’ approach to online learning outside the classroom has changed, and thus their probability of successfully completing the combinatorics course has increased statistically significantly. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Teaching combinatorial principles using relations through the placemat method

The presented paper is devoted to an innovative way of teaching mathematics, specifically the subject combinatorics in high schools. This is because combinatorics is closely connected with the beginnings of informatics and several other scientific disciplines such as graph theory and complexity theory. It is important in solving many practical tasks that require the compilation of an object with certain properties, proves the existence or non-existence of some properties, or specifies the number of objects of certain properties. This paper examines the basic combinatorial structures and presents their use and learning using relations through the Placemat method in teaching process. The effectiveness of the presented innovative way of teaching combinatorics was also verified experimentally at a selected high school in the Slovak Republic. Our experiment has confirmed that teaching combinatorics through relationships among talented children in mathematics is more effective than teaching by a standard algorithmic approach. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Developing the concept of task substitution and transformation by defining own equivalences

The presented article is dedicated to a new way of teaching substitution in algebra. In order to effectively master the subject matter, it is necessary for students to perceive the equal sign equivalently, to learn to manipulate expressions as objects, and to perceive and use transformations based on defining their own equivalences. According to the results of several researches, these changes do not occur automatically, and the neglect of their development leads to students' insufficient adoption of substitution. The submitted contribution presents a new way of teaching substitution, the stages of which support the gradual development of the necessary competences of students, so that substitution becomes part of their computing apparatus. The effectiveness of the mentioned method of teaching substitution was also verified experimentally. By conducting a pedagogical experiment, it was confirmed that the application of the substitution teaching method developed by us led to more frequent use of substitution by students from the experimental group (47 students) compared to students from the control group (82 students) who learned substitution in the usual way. It emerged from the interview with experimental group students that they considered the proposed method suitable and that it encouraged them to learn substitution in depth.Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport; Agentúra na Podporu Výskumu a Vývoja, APVV, (APVV-14-0446

Interpretation of mathematical tasks misunderstanding in the context of disciplinary literacy of university students

In the article, we focus on the investigation of the disciplinary literacy of technical university students with an emphasis on understanding the mathematical language and symbolism in the tasks assignment. As part of the pedagogical research, we were looking for an answer to the research question "How do students interpret the misunderstanding of the assignment?". In the first phase of the research, the students solved a test that contained four pairs of mathematical tasks: a standard task and its equivalent, which required the mastery of mathematical symbolic language at a higher level. In the second phase of the research, students filled out a questionnaire that contained possible causes of failure in solving tasks in the test. Based on the research findings, we can state that the teachers and students agreed on only one item of the questionnaire, namely that the primary cause of the students' failure was a misunderstanding of the assignment. Teachers and students differed statistically significantly in their responses to the other items of the questionnaire. Based on the students' statements, we conclude that their understanding of the assignment of the task corresponds with the ability to assign the learned calculation procedure to the task, that is, with procedural knowledge. Teachers attributed the causes of student failure in the test to insufficient knowledge of the mathematical language. © 2023 by Cherkas Global University All rights reserved

Production and antioxidant capacity of tissue cultures from four Amaryllidaceae species

The aim of this study was (i) to produce tissue cultures capable of efficient plant regeneration from European naturally occurring protected and/or pharmacologically important Amaryllidaceae species and (ii) to test them for antioxidant activities in order to select tissue cultures that scavenge efficiently oxygen radicals. Bulb explants were collected from Galanthus woronowii, two Leucojum species, and Sternbergia lutea. Leucojum species were Hungarian isolates. Mostly α-naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) and benzyladenine (BA) were used as growth regulator combinations for the induction and maintenance of tissue cultures and further antioxidant activity studies. Galanthus woronowii and L. vernum cultures produced shoots or whole plants via micropropagation (callus stage was observed only sporadically and callus tissue did not contribute to regeneration), whereas L. aestivum and S. lutea produced efficiently whole plants or multiple shoots via embryogenic calli. Total phenolic content, % inhibition of ABTS radical (ABTS*) cation, and peroxidase activities on native polyacrylamide gels were studied and showed differences between cultures. No relationship could be detected between polyphenol content / radical scavenging capacities and H2O2 reducing enzyme activities. For G. woronowii, S. lutea, and a culture line of L. vernum, polyphenol content and ABTS* cation scavenging activities were high and for G. woronowii, comparable to organs of the native plants used as explant sources. Bulbs of native plants showed low radical scavenging activities in general. For L. vernum and L. aestivum tissue cultures grown in the presence of NAA as the sole growth regulator, ABTS* cation scavenging showed low values. Enzymatic antioxidant (pyrogallol peroxidase) activities were low for all cultures and organs of native plants. This study shows the species conservation value of these cultures and highlights the high antioxidant capacity of G. woronowii and S. lutea, attributed to the presence of non-enzymatic scavengers

Teaching congruences in connection with diophantine equations

The presented paper is devoted to the new teaching model of congruences of computer science students within the subject of discrete mathematics at universities. The main goal was to create a new model of teaching congruences on the basis of their connection with Diophantine equations and subsequently to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model experimentally. The teaching of congruences was realized in two phases: acquisition of procedural knowledge and use of Diophantine equations to obtain conceptual knowledge of congruences. Experiments confirmed that conceptual understanding of congruences is positively related to increasing the procedural fluidity of congruence resolution. Research also demonstrated the suitability of using Diophantine equations to link congruences and equations. Among other things, the presented research has confirmed the justification of teaching mathematics in computer-oriented study programs. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Problem transformation as a gateway to the wider use of basic computational algorithms

The problem transformation method is based on the idea that if we cannot solve the given problem directly, we will transfer it to a situation in which we know how to solve it. The basic feature of the method is the division of the problem into subtasks. Furthermore, it is the division of the problem solution into the solution of partial tasks that will allow the use of already learned algorithms outside the set of problems in which they were taught. The use of the method of transformation develops the necessary students’ transformation skills, and, at the same time, it enables the greater use of ICT in mathematics teaching. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland