The effects of the graphing calculator on the achievement and attitude of college students enrolled in elementary algebra

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of various treatments using graphing calculators on achievement and attitude of college students enrolled in elementary algebra.

This study, a true-experimental pretest-posttest control group design, was conducted with 66 students enrolled in an elementary algebra course at Pellissippi State Technical Community College. The students were randomly assigned to the groups. Two instructors each taught three classes, one of each mode of instruction. The three modes of instruction were: 1) total calculator use, including instructor used as demonstrations and student use at all times including tests, 2) partial calculator use, including instructor use as demonstrations and student use in class but not on tests, and 3) no calculator use by instructor or student.

The null hypothesis tested were that there were no significant differences among the means of groups on: 1) algebraic achievement, 2) composite attitudes, 3) mathematical attitude, and 4) calculator attitude.

Pretest scores were analyzed to determine comparability of achievement and attitudes of groups prior to the treatment. Scores on posttests were used to determine achievement and attitudes of groups after the treatment. The posttest scores were used to test the hypotheses.

Since the groups were found to be comparable before the treatments, the means of the posttests were analyzed by an analysis of variance. When significant differences were found, Scheffé's post hoc comparisons were performed.

The results indicated that students in the total calculator use group performed higher on posttests of achievement. However, this was not determined to be significant at the .05 level. No significant differences were found in composite attitude or mathematical attitude of the groups. A positive calculator attitude change was found in the total calculator use group. At the .05 level, the mean of the calculator attitude scores for the total calculator use group was found to be significantly higher than the non-calculator group's mean.