A Student-Centered Approach to Learning Mathematics and Physics in Engineering Freshmen Courses

It is very well known that one of the most important reasons for abandonment in Engineering freshmen courses is the difficulty expressed by students for understanding very basic and essential Mathematics and Physics' concepts. But this is not the only reason for such a problem, the other very important cause for students' maladaptation during their first courses at the University, is the teacher-centered model which predominates in a clear majority of Higher Education courses. This paper will describe an ongoing experience which involves first, the development of small apps (learning objects) to be used in mobile devices by freshmen in Mathematics and Physics' courses and, second, the research about its impact in terms of learning outcomes. This methodology implies a Student-Centered and Active Learning approach, as students learn at their own pace by interacting with the apps, not only during lecture hours but, especially, before arriving to School, thus implementing a "Flipped-Learning" methodology. We will also describe in this paper the very first promising results obtained during this year as well as lessons learned during the first phase of the project developed during last year.