Pedagogical and Didactic Adaptations of a Mathematics Course to a Student-Centred Education in an Architecture Programme

This presentation will focus on both didactic and pedagogical reflections teaching mathematics in architecture programme in order to support the experience and learning of first year students. Led in order to promote the students’ intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985) and support our didactic reflections, an inventory of mathematical difficulties encountered by freshmen in their program has been established. This inventory also served the purpose of demystifying mathematics and valuing them through a place in a cursus more rooted in the profession (Wigfield and Eccles, 2000). Sorted according to the skills involved, the relevant difficulties pointed out by students were mostly found in two courses, topography and structure. Several examples will be presented demonstrating the lack of transfer between the disciplines, students studying formulas without understanding them.
To counter this lack of transfer, pedagogical reflections about our current teaching were developed thanks to the Feedback First-Year Project (FFYP) developed in the University of Liège. In this context, three significant devices set up in mathematics were developed. The first one is an online-oriented prerequisite test implemented on our academic online platform. The second one is an intermediate test based on true/false quizzes and the third one a simulation of the real exam with peer interventions. According to Nicol’s recommendations (2009), each of these features is completed with specific feedbacks specially designed in order to impact several dimensions of their motivation.