The use of a context and mapping concepts to improve learning and problem solving ability

A significant number of freshman students entering Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria (UTFSM), Valparaiso, Chile, lack the necessary cognitive skills to solve problems. This deficiency is a real handicap for the student progress through the Engineering program. In this work, the authors combine the use of contexts, to support Maths learning and understanding, with mapping concepts to represent the elements and relations existing in a mathematical problem. They also assess the effect of these two systematic activities on the student's cognitive ability to handle a mathematical problem. By context, they understand the different ways in which a body of knowledge can be structured so that it can be most readily grasped by the student. Finally, they compare the problem solving performance of experimental and control courses to statistically validate their results and conclusions.