First-year university biology students' difficulties with graphing skills

[摘要] Based on the perceived need for improved graphing skills of students at first-year university level, twolecturers wanted to produce a web-based computer programme to improve first-year university biologystudents’ ability to construct and interpret graphs. Prior to designing and developing the package,however, it was important to establish whether there was a need for such a programme, and what mightneed to be included. The investigation to establish this provided the research described in this researchreport.A situation analysis was conducted to establish the nature and extent of the problems of graphing skillsdiscussed anecdotally in the staff room of biology departments at a number of institutes. The ultimateintention (beyond this study) was to determine whether the problems were extensive and serious enoughto warrant developing supplementary teaching materials to teach graphing skills. All lecturers (n = 5) andteaching assistants (n = 4) involved in using or teaching graphing skills to first-year biology studentsat one university were identified and interviewed. The purpose of the interviews was to establish theproblems they believed are exhibited by their first-year students (with reference to graphing skills), andthe nature and extent of current teaching of such skills in their first-year courses. In order to triangulatethe information on student’s problems an item analysis was conducted of all questions incorporatinggraphs in two mid-year examination papers (n = 478 and n = 65), and students were observed during apractical session (n = 43).Results revealed that students experienced fewer problems with interpreting graphs than with graphconstruction. Of the four categories of graph interpretation problems identified by the teaching staff, themost popular category was students inability to describe quantitatively what the graph is showing (4teaching staff). This was confirmed in the question paper analysis when 58% of the medics students(n=478) were unable to answer correctly one question involving several interpretation skills. No specificskills for graph interpretation were observed as being a problem in the College of Science question paper(n=65). Observations showed interrelating graphs as the biggest problem (5 students out of 43). Fivecategories for problems with graph construction were identified by the teaching staff. The mostcommonly mentioned problem (4 teaching staff) was identifying or plotting variables, whereas classobservation revealed scaling axes as the most problematic skill shown by students (15 out of 43). In theexams, 80% of the medics students could not correctly answer one question requiring multiple skillsincluding identifying variables, and 56% could not correctly answer another question that required skillsthat also involved identifying variables. The College of Science question paper revealed that 85% of thestudents could not supply the units of measurement for the y axis.A needs analysis was conducted to establish how the lecturers thought graphing skills should be taughtand who should teach the skills. This information was needed to provide suggestions (from education'experts”) about what could be included in the computer programme to be developed subsequent to theresearch study, and how the teaching could best be done. Four members of the teaching staff said it wasimportant to give students a lot of exercises to practice the skills and five members of the teaching staffsaid it was the responsibility of the university tutors or lab staff to teach graphing skills.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand