Enhancing the Quality of Engineering Mathematics Education Through Digital Visualization Tools

The quality of university education is closely linked to students’ level of preparedness and their ability to develop key competencies at all. In mathematics education in particular, a significant gap often exists between the expected level of knowledge and the actual competencies of incoming students. However, many first-year students enter to university with insufficient prior knowledge, visible by low performance in diagnostic tests as well as by observed difficulties during the course duration. This paper explores the potential impact of selected innovative teaching methods on the quality of mathematics education at the university level. The exploratory study is based on the comparison of students’ performance using the input and output diagnostic test, complemented by analysis of students’ written responses related to understanding of mathematical concepts and visual representations. Within the exploratory design of the study, the results suggest higher performance in selected tasks and a greater ability to work with mathematical representations among students participating in visualization-based laboratory activities. The findings indicate patterns consistent with higher levels of conceptual understanding; however, these observations should be interpreted within the limitations of the study design.