Contributions and limits of a specific course on manipulation of formal statements for fresh university students

Stéphanie Bridoux (1) , Viviane Durand-Guerrier (2)

1 UMons - Université de Mons
2 UM - Université de Montpellier

In this paper, we present preliminary results from an ongoing project about an innovative course for first year students in Computer Sciences aiming to improve stu-dents' abilities in manipulation of formal statements and writing proofs. The data analysed show that although the course seems to improve syntactic abilities, the semantic control of formal statements remains problematic for most students.

Mots clés: Didactics of mathematics at university level; logical analysis; proof; syntax; semantics

Domaines: Education; Histoire et perspectives sur les mathématiques [math.HO]

Stéphanie Bridoux, Viviane Durand-Guerrier. Contributions and limits of a specific course on manipulation of formal statements for fresh university students. CERME 9 - Ninth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education, Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education; ERME, Feb 2015, Prague, Czech Republic. pp.2074-2080. ⟨hal-01288581⟩