The effect of graphing technology on students' understanding of functions in a precalculus course
Date
2006
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The academic performance of students who engaged in five Calculator-Based Laboratory (CBL) activities in a precalculus course was compared with the performance of those who did not engage in these activities. The goal of this study was to investigate whether there was a difference in the performance of these two groups of students on three component competencies of functions: modeling, graphing, and solving problems. The methodology included a quasi-experimental nonequivalent control-group design in which the researcher taught an experimental (n = 23) and a control (n = 25) precalculus class. Data were collected via a pretest and posttest, and test responses were evaluated using quantitative and qualitative methods. ☐ Multivariate and univariate analyses performed on the posttest data revealed no statistically significant differences between the experimental group and the control group on the three components and the total score at the α = .05 level. However, there was evidence from a qualitative analysis of the posttest responses that indicated students who engaged in the CBL activities outperformed students who did not on tasks where they were asked to sketch the graph of a function. In addition, students in the experimental class were less susceptible to the influence of graphing calculator misconceptions such as scaling issues and perceptual illusions when they attempted to graph the behavior of a function. Furthermore, students in the experimental class utilized graphical methods more often than those in the control class to solve problems. Lastly, the descriptive statistics indicated that students in the control class failed to sketch a graph or provide a solution to approximately twice as many items on the posttest as compared to the experimental class.