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This chapter presents motivation, goals, and organisational details of two EU projects: MathGeAr and MetaMath, funded by the EU Tempus programme. The goal was to study and improve mathematics education for STEM specialisations in Russian (MetaMath) and Georgian/Armenian (MathGeAr) universities. The analysis carried out in the beginning of the two projects and described in this book has been followed up by modernisation and piloting phases. Special attention has been paid to the introduction of modern educational technologies, such as the intelligent multifunctional platform Math-Bridge used as an online component of modernised mathematical courses.

The first section discusses the importance of mathematics as a part of the engineering sciences and education and global challenges caused by lack of student motivation and relatively high drop-out rates. New learning approaches are needed to increase students’ motivation. These approaches can be supported by using information and communication technology.

The second section introduces the two parallel projects MetaMath and MathGeAr, with their goals and organisational details, and their participants from the EU, Russia, Georgia, and Armenia. An essential part of the project is modernisation of selected courses with a special focus on technology-enhanced learning.

Students’ perceptions of mathematics have impact on their motivation and performance. In a broader sense they contain cultural differences between nations and institutions. The third section studies engineering mathematics students’ perceptions at all the universities participating in the project by analysing an online survey carried out among the students.

This chapter outlines the methodology for the comparative analysis of mathematics courses taught in participating Russian, Georgian, Armenian and EU universities to the students of technical and engineering programmes. It identifies a range of factors, based on which the courses have been compared, and it provides recommendations on performing the comparison. The most important part of the comparison is finding the correspondence between the actual content taught in counterpart courses of the two target universities. In order to perform this comparison in a meaningful way, the we needed a certain instrument, enabling consistent characterisation of the content of the compared courses in terms of the mathematical knowledge involved. We adopted the SEFI Framework for Mathematics Curricula in Engineering Education (SEFI, 2013) for these purposes.

Higher education in general and engineering education in particular are divided into three levels in Russia. The first level is the Bachelor’s degree course; the second level is the specialist and Master’s degree program; the third level is the postgraduate training program.

The three-cycle higher education (HE) system has been introduced in Georgia in 2005, when Georgia became a member of the Bologna Process at the Bergen Summit. Bachelor, Master and Doctoral programs have already been introduced in all stately recognised higher education institutions (HEIs), as well as ECTS and Diploma Supplement. All students below doctoral level are enrolled in a two-cycle degree system (except for certain specific disciplines such as medicine and dental medicine education)—one cycle education and with its learning outcomes corresponding to the Master’s level.

The higher education system in Armenia consists of a number of higher education institutions (HEIs), both state and private. State higher education institutions operate under the responsibility of several ministries, but most of them are under the supervision of the Ministry of Education and Science. At present there are 26 state and 41 private higher education institutions operating in the Republic of Armenia (RA), of which 35 are accredited institutions, 6 are non-accredited institutions, 3 are branches of state HEIs and 4 are branches of private HEIs from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Higher education is provided by many types of institutions: institutes, universities, academies and a conservatory.

This chapter introduces engineering mathematics education in the EU, especially in the participating countries Finland and France. Their educational systems correspond to each other to some extent, but still differ in many aspects. Special emphasis is on the curricula of Tampere University of Technology and University of Lyon. The engineering curricula of these universities contains comparable amount of engineering mathematics depending on the engineering study program. Normally the courses are taught in the beginning of studies. As mathematics is a universal language, the contents of the courses are well comparable.

This chapter describes case studies of math education for STEM in Russian universities: Kazan National Research Technical University named after A.N. Tupolev, Saint Petersburg State Electrotechnical University (LETI), Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod, Ogarev Mordovia State University and Tver State University. It includes comparative analysis of math curricula for STEM of above-mentioned universities and several European universities which participate in the project.

The history of Akaki Tsereteli State University (ATSU) started eight decades ago and now it is distinguished with its traditions throughout Georgia and holds an honorable place in the business of cultural, intellectual and moral education of the Georgian nation. According to the Georgian government’s resolution #39, February 23, 2006 the legal entities of public law Kutaisi Akaki Tsereteli State University and Kutaisi N. Muskhelishvili State Technical University were combined, the educational status being determined to be the university and the new entity was named Akaki Tsereteli State University. ATSU was merged with Sukhumi Subtropical Teaching University in 2010.

Armenian State Pedagogical University (ASPU) was established on November 7, 1922 and in 1948 it was named after the great Armenian Enlightener Educator Khachatur Abovian. ASPU implements a three-level education system (Bachelor, Master and Doctorate studies). It has ten faculties.

The two EU Tempus-IV projects MetaMath () and MathGeAr () have brought together mathematics educators, TEL specialists and experts in education quality assurance from 21 organizations across six countries. A comprehensive comparative analysis of the entire spectrum of math courses in the EU, Russia, Georgia and Armenia has been conducted. Its results allowed the consortium to pinpoint and introduce several curricular modifications, while preserving the overall strong state of the university math education in these countries. The methodology, the procedure and the results of this analysis are presented here.