Integrating the University into the School through Basic Mathematics: an experience in distance learning

Abstract

The objective of this work is to discuss the activities of an extension course on topics of basic mathematics, with the target audience of high school graduating students, who intend to take courses in the area of ​​exact sciences, and students of the first period of the Federal University of Tocantins of several courses, such as: forestry engineering, agronomy, biotechnology, environmental chemistry, among others. For the realization of the course, the distance learning format was adopted, through a virtual learning environment, as the planning and development of the course took place in a period when the institution found its face-to-face activities suspended due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19. During the course, five synchronous meetings were held in October and November 2020, conducted by two professors and three academics, with the effective participation of 88 course participants. The results obtained during the course indicate that most students have difficulties in solving contextualized problem situations that involve rules and algebraic manipulations, that is, they have difficulties in interpreting data that, in this type of question, are not clearly presented, being necessary the conciliation of a detailed reading with the mathematical concepts. Therefore, the course provided participants with a review of the basic concepts of Mathematics, focusing on contextualized problems.