Tangible Tools in Mathematics for Engineering Students: Experimental Activity at Politecnico di Torino

In the article, we present the tasks of the Maths lab at Politecnico di Torino that we tested for the first time in the academic year 2018–19, which were proposed for undergraduate Engineering students in their first year with the aim to integrate active learning into our traditional courses. The student activity in response to the tasks took place in classes of at most 25 individuals. The work was organized in small groups, mainly following a problem-solving approach and a central role was given to artefacts and technological applications. Here, we discuss the main motivations of our lab project, two specific tasks and some data collected by means of a questionnaire, in order to examine the interplay between tangible and virtual tools.