Context

The target learners are first semester students in a private Mexican university who are taking an introductory course focused on mathematical tools applied to physics, with special attention to modeling with calculus and vectors. The mathematical background of the students varies significantly given that they come from many different secondary schools spread all around Mexico and Latin America, but most of them have very low level of basic mathematical tools such as algebra and trigonometry, although the only requisite to take the subject is basic algebra. The course was designed in flipped classroom format, in the sense that the students are assigned to watch videos in a MOOC specially designed for the subject (Fernández de Lara, R., Salmón, R. & Zavala, G., 2013), these videos must be watched and a selfdiagnostic must be solved previous to the first session of each topic during the semester; the students are also encouraged to read the course text book by Alarcón, H. & Zavala, G. (2008). During the first session of each topic the students solve a worksheet collaboratively, these worksheets were also specifically designed for the course by Alarcón, H. & Zavala, G. (2006). During the solution of the worksheet, the students are frequently aided by the instructor and a teaching assistant by giving them feedback and suggesting ways to reason about the solution of the sequenced questions and problems. The applet designed for this work deals with 3D vectors, so it is important to mention that by this point of the course the students learned previously about right triangle trigonometry, graphical representation of vectors, calculation of rectangular components in 2D vectors, and basic vector operations such as addition, subtraction and multiplication by a scalar.