Using lexicography for learning mathematics

Abstract

Students struggle with the transition from school to university in mathematics. One reason is that at school, mathematics tends to be presented as an ensemble of calculations rather than as a network of concepts. We plan to investigate how lexicography and e-dictionary construction can help students in this transition. In the paper, we introduce the concept of a seminar that uses lexicographic methods in first-year mathematics courses. In the seminar, students will be provided with basic lexicographic knowledge and thus enabled to discuss the newly learned concepts and the relations that hold between them. We also present the lexicographic concept of the resource to be developed in the course: We focus on its article structure and its access structure and describe both in terms of the function theory of lexicography. We suggest innovative access structures which can support the acquisition of mathematical concepts as well as of mathematical terminology. The article structures are based on an ontology structure of the subject matter domain with different kinds of concepts and relations between them.