Using a Classroom Response System for Promoting Interaction to Teaching Mathematics to Large Groups of Undergraduate Students

This work describes the design and evaluation of a proposal to use Classroom Response Systems (CRS), intended to promote participative classes of Mathematics at University. The proposal is based on Problem Based Learnig (PBL) and uses Robert's six hypotheses for mathematical teaching-learning. The results show that PBL is a relevant strategy to establish Robert's hypotheses in order to construct mathematical teaching-learning activities. Different types of activities have been proposed, including theoretical questions and problems, computer tasks, self-assessment, mathematical word searches and crosswords. These activities have aimed to broaden the undergraduate students' mathematical experience by guiding their current deductive and algebraic conception towards an inductive and empirical one, towards the actual origin and construction of mathematical knowledge. In this context, it is proved that CRS allows establishing a fluid lecturer-students communication. The overall result seems to demonstrate that the described methodology generates a working atmosphere that students like. Secondly, results show that the strategy leads to greater learning compared to what is obtained using conventional university teaching. In addition, the proposed methodology has a very wide scope, so it might be used for the teaching-learning of other disciplines different that Mathematics.