RUME 25
2023
Omaha, Nebraska
Successes and Challenges in Supporting Calculus Students to Conceptualize and Express Distance on Graphs
Page: 1199
Conceptualizing and expressing distances on graphs of functions are central to understanding why integrals afford measuring areas and volumes in calculus. In this preliminary report, we share the results of implementing an intervention designed to support these skills with 31 Integral Calculus students. Initial results show that the activity did support some students in learning to accurately expressing the horizontal distance between two functions. However, a closer look at students’ work revealed that the tasks may not have supported all of the ways of reasoning we intended. We discuss the instance of two students who successfully completed the activity yet displayed evidence of treating symbols as labels or parameters and following a pattern to complete the tasks rather than conceptualizing distance. We close with a discussion of how to improve the next iteration of the intervention.