All chemistry students must develop competency in analyzing and making sense of data. However, there are many difficulties that chemistry students may experience while analyzing data. Many students may not use relevant prior knowledge to aid in making sense of data, or they may not form conclusions using all the data provided. Additionally, prior…

Both graph comprehension and data analysis and interpretation are influenced by one's prior knowledge and experiences. To understand how one's prior knowledge and experiences interact with their analysis of a graph, we conducted think-aloud interviews with general chemistry students as they interpreted a graph to determine optimal conditions for…

Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) programs often introduce students to scientific research and STEM career possibilities. However, the program impact on students and their research skill development is not well understood. In a case study with 10 REU students, the authors used eye-tracking and self-report data to determine student…

The ability to correctly interpret data is an important skill in modern knowledge societies. The present study investigates adults' ability to interpret covariation data presented in bar graphs. Drawing on previous findings that show that the problem context influences the interpretation of contingency tables (grounded and concrete problems are…

How do university students understand the graphs that they read in their textbooks? How does their knowledge regarding the content and their statistical training influence this understanding? Does the kind of task demand also influence this understanding? To answer these questions, we asked a group of psychology students and a group of economics…

Lab activities are an important element of an undergraduate physics course. In these lab activities, students construct and interpret graphs in order to connect the procedures of the lab with an understanding of the related physics concepts. This study investigated undergraduate students' construction and interpretation of graphs with best-fit…

This research compared undergraduate Novices and PhD Experts in psychology and business in their exploration of psychology and business domain graphs. An overall expertise effect in graph explanation was found. Results indicated that Novices paused longer than Experts before beginning their explanations. Qualitative analyses showed that Experts…

This study explored how the challenges encountered during integral sign determination process change after various learning processes. In this comparative investigation which is based on qualitative data, the students in the CAS group were subjected to technology enhanced teaching whereas the students in the traditional group were subjected to the…

To study how the organization of information affects the way that information is interpreted, a total of 404 undergraduates in two studies (151 and 253 students, respectively) solved statistical reasoning problems based on data presented in a variety of types of graphs and tables. When assessing relative probabilities, students were equally…

A study was conducted to determine the effect of graphic format--bar, line, table, and line-table graph--on the interpretation of numerical data by field dependent and field independent students. Ninety-six undergraduate students were given the Group Embedded Figures Test and randomly assigned to one of four treatments. During the testing phase,…