This research-to-practice full paper looks into how first-year students at a Portuguese higher education institution respond to a Basic Informatic Skills tool. This instrument is used to help the industry better understand the students' preparedness and the domain of critical skills for success in Information Technology (IT) specialized workers. As this instrument has a set of questions regarding mathematical knowledge, problem-solving ability, and logical reasoning, and we believe solid mathematical preparation is essential to succeeding in a computer engineering degree program and career, we applied it to determine how well-prepared students are in mathematics skills at the entrance of a computer engineering degree. The test measures six subscales to identify critical competencies in IT: verbal comprehension, numerical aptitude, attention and resistance to monotony, logical reasoning, coding analysis capacity, and diagrammatic reasoning. In general, the student's verbal, numerical, numbers series and code skills of the used instrument (Basic Informatic Skills) were reasonable. Only the attention scale was worse, and the diagram capacity was better. There were only slight gender differences in the average coding and diagrammatic reasoning abilities. Aside from a slight correlation with numerical skills, age did not significantly correlate with any skills. We also determined the correlation among the instrument's several scales and several mathematical subjects, but no correlations were found. This study promoted reflections on the background of students entering a higher computer engineering degree in relation to mathematically based skills considered fundamental for any engineering course. These aspects lead to considering the effort that must be made in the teaching provided to fill these gaps so that students can achieve academic success with a set of curricular units and ultimately prepare them for the marketplace.

Programming is a fundamental part of informatics engineering curriculum, but it is often problematic. Mathematical knowledge is very important for programming and there are studies evidencing some relationship between programming skills and experience in mathematics. In this exploratory study, developed in Coimbra Institute of Engineering, we observed an high rate of abstention from evaluations and, from students that performed evaluation, most of them have similar results on both curricular units. This relationship forces us to pay particular attention to the Differential and Integral Calculus curricular unit integrated in the curriculum of informatics engineering degrees, which also shows high failure rates. This justifies an intervention in terms of complementary actions, to allow the development of competencies in terms of logical reasoning and problem solving, competencies evidenced as necessary to learn programming.

More and more students are reaching higher education courses with deficiencies in terms of mathematical knowledge. These deficits are reflected in various curricular units. In this paper we report the studies that have been developed to solve the problems in Differential and Integral Calculus. Thus, a physical support centre and a virtual platform were created. Students attending the first one were submitted to a specific diagnostic test in order to detect their difficulties and thus to be able to develop appropriate and personalized activities in that centre, under the supervision of a mathematical specialist. At the physical space, students can develop similar activities, but autonomously and without supervision. In this platform, the contents are made available according to the students' learning preferences and their cognitive and affective level. Accessibility aspects were also implemented so that any student with any type of impairment could use the platform.

In this work, we present some results from the first 8 working semesters of CeAMatE, a Centre that supports Coimbra Institute of Engineering student’s to overcome their mathematical difficulties and to prepare them to a full integration on Differential and Integral Calculus curricular units.

The program “Introduction to programming in the first cycle of basic education” initiated in 2015 has provided the opportunity to develop computational thinking and digital literacy among students. The existing literature suggests that Scratch programming language may have a strong influence on the skills acquired by students in classroom. In this context, it is intended to build an intervention with objectives that fit into the Student Profile leaving compulsory education and developed within the scope of curricular flexibility, recommended for the 1st year of basic education. The applied methodology aims to evaluate the impact on students' knowledge (mathematics and mother tongue), attitudes (in relation to knowledge and citizenship) and on the capacities (cognitive, emotional and practical) as well as in the school community (students, teachers and families).

Issues related to the failure of mathematics in the teaching of engineering and the negative impact that these difficulties have in various courses in engineering degrees is a problem to which we have devoted our attention and investigation. Most students when entering higher education have insufficient preparation in mathematics. It is further aggravated because of the different areas of knowledge from their background when entering degrees in Engineering. The Mathematics in Engineering Support Center (CeAMatE) is a space intended to monitor students who attend the course of “Differential and Integral Calculus”. It allows the construction of an academic course that promotes the development of students' independent study skills, with the joint responsibility of building their own educational paths. It also facilitates the construction of learning and acquisition of new knowledge through the availability of various activities and resources aimed at overcoming students' difficulties. It also incorporates an e-learning component, adapting to the learning styles and cognitive levels of students. The understanding of the educational pathways made by students who attended CeAMatE and the corresponding academic achievement in “Differential and Integral Calculus” course is a goal of this study. This analysis will permit a better development of a set of suitable mathematical strategies/activities.