Form one students' ideas about algebraic expressions when they interact with a courseware

Khairun Amira, Khazali (2009) Form one students' ideas about algebraic expressions when they interact with a courseware. [Final Year Project Report / IMRAD] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Previous research on algebra focuses on students' difficulties when creating algebraic expressions to solve problem based questions. Besides writing algebraic expressions, students were found to have problems in more basic areas which they should have already mastered. The difficulties they had was in understanding the concept of unknown, solving equations in brackets, as well as performing mathematical operations on both sides of an equation. This research looks into form one students' ideas about algebraic linear terms, linear equations, and solving linear equations when they interact with a courseware. It aims to identify students' ideas, develop models based on the ideas and discover the difficulties students face when they interact with the courseware. This qualitative research uses the think aloud method to gather data from eight form one students. Some of the ideas found were that students made translation of text displayed, recalled concepts to find answers to questions and made interpretations by inferring to image and color of text. Students had ideas in solving linear equations by first grouping the unknowns to one side, then solving the mathematical operations and simplifying fractions to get the value of the unknown. Other than that, a student also had the idea to solve a linear equation by replacing the unknown with a value that was provided in the choices of answer. Difficulties found were mostly caused by the way information was constructed in the courseware. The courseware did not clearly define important terms, method used to point out important information was misleading and examples given were insufficient. Other difficulties found were in solving equations in brackets and the concept of carrying out mathematical operations between algebraic terms and integers. The ideas students had were also found to be influenced by their previous knowledge.

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