Didactic proposal for the teaching of the topic of optimization, supported with Excel and Geogebra, for high school students

Abstract

With the support of Excel and Geogebra, the present didactic proposal exposes some activities for solving optimization problems in the framework of differential calculus. A 40-students pilot group for working during 48 hours about optimization has been selected. At the beginning, a series of contextualized problems for solving correctly via in one another collaborations between the students and the teacher´s guidance has been proposed. Next, the students have built on a small scale the corresponding model and they have look for the correct solution by pencil and paper. Afterwards, using Excel and Geogebra the result has been analyzed and verified. Finally, the students of the pilot group together with another senior high school 300 students with three optimization problems were assessed. It must be pointed out that all the students had finished a differential calculus course. The results of the test of the 300 students show a lack of significant learning about the concepts involved into the optimization subject, whereas 66% of that of the pilot group have solved the test satisfactory. They have also shown a better understanding of the basic concepts of optimization, which brings to light the viability of the proposita.