2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Research shows that engineering students have reported difficulties in understanding mathematics and applying it in the specific subjects of their courses, mainly due to the lack of connection between the mathematical content covered in the early years and the subjects covered during the courses. Similarly to this research, other studies mention the need to reconsider and restructure the mathematics subjects taught in engineering courses so that there are links between the areas, developing multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary activities, using, for example, the active methodologies, software, and relating practice with theory. Considering these points, the purpose of this article is to show which were the investigations that originated the necessary subsidies for the elaboration of a Contextualized Event, which, according to the Theory of Mathematics in the Context of Science, are problems or projects with the purpose of integrating mathematical contents with the specific ones of the course in which it is being acted upon, to teach eigenvalues and eigenvectors in Control and Automation Engineering courses. These investigations were based on the precepts of the curricular and epistemological phases of the theory mentioned before, since it aims to link mathematics to other disciplines that use it as a tool and to situations in the daily life of the professional being trained. These investigations consisted of curriculum analysis of the Engineering courses, interviews with professors of specific disciplines of the Engineering courses, analysis of didactic material (books, handouts and classes). After the investigations and the realization of the subsidies, a Contextualized Event was elaborated with the objective of teaching the eigenvalue and eigenvector contents through the study of the Covid-19 disease propagation using the SIR (Susceptible, Infected and Recovered) model and investigating the dynamics and stability of this model. This intervention was developed with the intention of motivating the second year students of the Control and Automation Engineering course to understand the link between the eigenvalue and eigenvector contents with the Control Systems II subject taught in the last year of the Control and Automation course, and also to engage them with a meaningful social context. During the work with the students that participated in this intervention it can be observed that they felt more motivated and also realized the importance of learning concepts studied in the initial years of the Engineering courses and that they could notice the involvement of mathematical content in contextualized problems in their area using an issue of daily life. It is expected that Contextualized Events structured this way may help students to link the mathematical knowledge acquired in other contexts of their education or even their professional life, helping them to have a holistic education as it is employed in the Brazilian National Curriculum Guidelines of Engineering courses and also provide students a more significant learning, once they have a better understanding of where and how the mathematical content being addressed is used.