Modern information and communication technologies in the educational process at the example of a web-applique for discipline “Discrete Mathematics”

Authors:
1
Lviv Polytechnic National University

The question of modernization in education is interesting not just for educators and not just in Ukraine. Nowadays it is widely discussed the idea of cardinal changes in educational sphere and the necessity of changes in teaching approaches themselves taking into consideration the specific of information perception by a person who lives in the age of informational society with a high level of informational service, accessibility to any source of reliable information, visualization of the given Рис. 7. Інтерфейс веб-аплікації Lviv Polytechnic National University Institutional Repository http://ena.lp.edu.ua 69 information, relevance of the used data and also the results of more precise process research of new material understanding.

The author offers practical implementation of the ideas given above. As an example there are the solving tasks on the subject “Discrete Mathematics” given in the popular nowadays IT form which is web application. Such applications have numerous peculiarities that allow them to become well-known among users all over the world really fast. The first peculiarity is the relevant ease and the speed of coding a program by developers using widely popular technologies. Also the important fact is an application independence from platform where it is launched as it can be opened with help of usual web browsers which are set up on every type of modern smartphones and personal computers; it means that there is no use in setting any additional programs to view the application. Furthermore there is not any risk factor which implies danger of infecting system with some virus while setting some little-known program on your computer.

The principle of knowledge presenting mainly involves solving typical tasks step-by-step in friendly way for information perception and also comfortable visualization of all solving steps. Each next step is solved in the almost identical way as the previous one but with some insignificant changes in conditions of the task and its gradual complications. It gives a student the ability to understand the general system of solving those tasks, their dependence on formulae and typical rules and also it helps to remember better the steps of solving tasks, as the visual memory is actively involved in the activity. By using this application a student cam do as many similar tasks as he/she needs to understand completely the method of solving the example and if it is needed he/she will be able to move to the more complicated level.

In this article a training web-application prototype was made which helps students to master solving one task from the topic “Logic of Statements” on the subject “Discrete Mathematics”.

The typical task is divided into steps, which fully reflect the process of student’s thinking and forming the logical sequence of the theoretical material and its usage.

The key interface elements of web-application are divided into several main groups, each of them has its own meaning and unchangeable position on the page. Those elements are an essentiality table, a task condition, a main field for displaying the progress of task solving, a block with step-by-step navigation of the solving process and a description of every action in the current step with the launch button of this action.

During the developing and designing of the interface the great amount of attention was paid on animation transition of interface elements’ state while interacting with a user.

The current application was developed by using HTML, CSS, javascript on the basis of framework Twitter Bootstrap which is designed for quick and cross-browser creating of web-interface and library jQuery prototypes in order to simplify writing javascript-code prototype. The program and its source code are laid out with free access in repository on github [5] in order to be introduced. The current prototype presents the opportunities for modern informational technologies usage in the process of teaching students Natural Sciences. After the precise analysis and users’ questionnaire, who were involved in the testing, the result is going to be taking for the basement for the final product with a probable cooperation with professional designers and developers.

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5. [electronic resource] .– access: http://dzhavala.github.io/mathApp/