The Future of Education

It is well known that theorems and their proofs are an importent part of mathematics education.

In this work we describe an approach of teaching students to prove independently some mathematical statements .It continues our quest for ways of improving students understanding of the theoretical part of the subject.

In our recent papers, we described the use of web based assignments for students self- learning of theory, additionally to lectures and tutorials.

After developing the web assignments to improve students' understanding of theorems, we decided to try constructing assignments that would teach them how to prove some statements or theorems independently. These assignments are part of calculus and differential equations courses for engineering students, and not of a course devoted specifically to proving theorems.

In this talk, we describe our use of specially designed statements where the proof of a statement is similar to solving textbook problems. Gradually, the assignments become more general and students produce the required proof.

The approach described above is not restricted to only Calculus. It can be extended to different mathematics subjects.