PROCEEDINGS OF THE 20TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2017
San Diego, California
Exploring student conceptions of binary operation
Page: 1330
Binary Operations are essential to many undergraduate mathematics courses. However, little isknown about student conceptions around binary operation. This report presents preliminaryresults from nine student surveys about the topic. The question set was developed in response toGroup Concept Inventory (GCI) results. We look at three activities closely related to binaryoperation: identifying when an instantiation is a binary operation, identifying when twoinstantiation are the same binary operation, and generating an original binary operationinstantiation. We use the lens of variation theory to make sense of student responses. We foundthat students’ concept image of binary operation may be missing key attributes (such asrequiring two inputs) and contain unnecessary attributes (requiring a general rule.)Key words: