Many researches show that students have difficulties in understanding graphics in kinematics. Some authors argue that we can use different instructional strategies to reduce these difficulties. Based on these studies, we developed and applied a didactic sequence using educational robotics to teach graphic analysis in movements in a dimension with…

The study presented investigates the effects of supportive graphical interventions on the graphing skills and conceptual understanding of students in physics. In this study, the first group of participants was presented with ready-made graphs during the instruction, the second group was instructed on the proper construction and extraction of…

Previous studies have identified physics students' difficulties with graph slope and area under a graph in different contexts. In this study we compared physics and nonphysics (psychology) students' understanding of graphs; i.e., we evaluated the effects of concept (graph slope vs area under graph), type of question (qualitative vs quantitative),…

We report on a study investigating the influence of context, direction of translation, and function type on undergraduate students' ability to translate between graphical and symbolic representations of mathematical relations. Students from an algebra-based and a calculus-based physics course were asked to solve multiple-choice items in which they…

Developing a better understanding of the measurement process and measurement uncertainty is one of the main goals of university physics laboratory courses. This study investigated the influence of graphical representation of data on student understanding and interpreting of measurement results. A sample of 101 undergraduate students (48 first year…

This study examined the written work of students in the introductory calculus-based electricity and magnetism course at the University of Arkansas. The students' solutions to hourly exams were divided into a small set of countable features organized into three major categories, mathematics, language, and graphics. Each category was further divided…

In an English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) class, special emphasis is often put on interaction and negotiation as a means of learning and understanding the language being taught (Long, 1981; Pica, 1994). However, student-student interaction as well as student-teacher interaction could be difficult to achieve in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of formative assessment as a teaching strategy through an internet-mediated assessment portal (ImAP) on preservice elementary student understanding of kinematics graphs as opposed to traditional lecturing. A quasi-experimental design was used for this purpose. Findings revealed that…