ERIC Number: EJ1156033
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017-Oct
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1954
EISSN: N/A
Multimedia Resources Designed to Support Learning from Written Proofs: An Eye-Movement Study
Roy, Somali; Inglis, Matthew; Alcock, Lara
Educational Studies in Mathematics, v96 n2 p249-266 Oct 2017
This paper presents two studies of an intervention designed to help undergraduates comprehend mathematical proofs. The intervention used multimedia resources that presented proofs with audio commentary and visual animations designed to focus attention on logical relationships. In study 1, students studied an e-Proof or a standard written proof and their comprehension was assessed in both immediate and delayed tests; the groups performed similarly at immediate test, but the e-Proof group exhibited poorer retention. Study 2 accounted for this unexpected result by using eye-movement analyses to demonstrate that participants who studied an e-Proof exhibited less processing effort when not listening to the audio commentary. We suggest that the extra support offered by e-Proofs disrupts the processes by which students organise information, and thus restricts the extent to which their new understanding is integrated with existing knowledge. We discuss the implications of these results for evaluating teaching innovations and for supporting proof comprehension.
Descriptors: Intervention, Undergraduate Students, Multimedia Instruction, Eye Movements, Validity, Mathematical Logic, Foreign Countries, College Students, Randomized Controlled Trials, Educational Technology, Technology Uses in Education, Comparative Analysis, Statistical Analysis, Mathematics Tests, Scores, Textbooks, Teaching Methods, Prior Learning
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A