PROCEEDINGS OF THE 17TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2014
Denver, Colorado
What Is Simplifying?: Using Word Clouds As A Research Tool
Page: 1159
This paper describes the utilization of word clouds within a research methodology. To explore student notions of the concept of “simplify” in a trigonometry course, students responded to the prompt “In your own words, what does it mean to simplify?” The researcher created a word cloud derived from the student responses to explore and identify themes. These themes formed an initial framework for an in-depth analysis of the responses. During the textual analysis, the word cloud was consulted to confirm findings. Using the word cloud in preliminary and confirmatory roles adhered to the framework put forth by McNaught and Lam (2010). From the analysis, students appeared to view the act of simplifying as a process of taking an expression to its most basic state in order to reduce the perceived size (physical or cognitive) of the expression. Moreover, word clouds played a valuable role, providing visual representations of data.