Students
may rely on calculators to bypass a more holistic understanding of mathematics,
researcher says November 12, 2012 calculator Enlarge (Phys.org)—Math
instructors promoting calculator usage in college classrooms may want to
rethink their teaching strategies, says Samuel King, postdoctoral student in
the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research & Development Center. King
has proposed the need for further research regarding calculators' role in the
classroom after conducting a limited study with undergraduate engineering
students published in the British Journal of Educational Technology.
"We really can't assume that
calculators are helping students," said King. "The goal is to
understand the core concepts during the lecture. What we found is that use of
calculators isn't necessarily helping in that regard."
Together with Carol
Robinson, coauthor and director of the Mathematics Education Centre at
Loughborough University in England, King examined whether the inherent
characteristics of the mathematics questions presented to students facilitated
a deep or surface approach to learning. Using a limited sample size, they
interviewed 10 second-year undergraduate students enrolled in a competitive
engineering program. The students were given a number of mathematical questions
related to sine waves—a mathematical function that describes a smooth
repetitive oscillation—and were allowed to use calculators to answer them. More
than half of the students adopted the option of using the calculators to solve
the problem.
"Instead of being able to accurately represent or visualize a
sine wave, these students adopted a trial-and-error method by entering values
into a calculator to determine which of the four answers provided was
correct," said King. "It was apparent that the students who adopted
this approach had limited understanding of the concept, as none of them
attempted to sketch the sine wave after they worked out one or two
values." After completing the problems, the students ……
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