Date of Graduation
1999
Document Type
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
The following study investigated the cognitive growth of college developmental geometry students enrolled in a one-semester course in introductory Euclidean Geometry. A quasi-experimental research design was used to determine if changes in cognitive growth occurred when students used a computer-generated automatic draw tool as an instructional aid. The subjects were a control group of 36 community-college students who learned geometry in a lecture-based formal and 27 students from the same college who learned geometry by using the automatic draw tool, GeoExplorer , for one-third of their instructional time. The van Hiele Theory of levels of thought in geometry was used to explain the cognitive growth of the students. The CDASSG van Hiele Geometry Test was used to determine level assignment. The results showed that on the pre-test 83% of control group subjects and 93% of experimental group subjects could be assigned to one of the van Hiele levels. On the post-test, 81% of the control group subjects and 89% of the experimental group subjects could be assigned to one of the levels. Eighty-eight per cent of the students who could not be assigned on the pre-test could be assigned on the post-test. The results showed that on the post-test, control group subjects had a mean increase of 0.913 levels, and experimental group subjects had a mean increase of 1.304 levels which was not significantly greater than the increase for the control group. For the control group, subjects who entered at level 0 did not gain significantly more than those who entered at level 1, but for the experimental group, subjects who entered at level 0 did gain significantly more than subjects who entered at level 1. Neither returning adults nor traditional-age students in the experimental group had a mean level increase that was greater than their counterparts in the control group. Neither males nor females in the experimental group had a mean level increase that was significantly greater than their counterparts in the control group.
Recommended Citation
Larew, Lalah W., "The effects of learning geometry using a computer-generated automatic draw tool on the levels of reasoning of college developmental students." (1999). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 9251.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/9251