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Sometimes Less is More: Examples of Student-Centered Technology as Boundary Objects in Differential Equations

Sometimes Less is More: Examples of Student-Centered Technology as Boundary Objects in Differential Equations
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Author(s): Karen Keene (North Carolina State University, USA)and Chris Rasmussen (San Diego State University, USA)
Copyright: 2013
Pages: 25
Source title: Enhancing Mathematics Understanding through Visualization: The Role of Dynamical Software
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Samer Habre (Lebanese American University, Lebanon)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-4050-4.ch002

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Abstract

As described in the communities of practice literature (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), boundary objects are material things that interface two or more communities of practice. Extending this, Hoyles, Noss, Kent, and Bakker (2010) defined technology-enhanced boundary objects as, “software tools that adapt or extend symbolic artefacts identified from existing work practice, that are intended to act as boundary objects, for the purposes of employees’ learning and enhancing workplace communication” (p. 17). The authors adapt this idea to the undergraduate mathematics classroom and use the phrase “classroom technology-enhanced boundary object” to refer to a piece of software that acts as a boundary object between the classroom community and the mathematical community. They provide three extended examples of these objects as used in a first semester differential equations classroom to illustrate how students’ mathematical activity may advance as they interact with the software. These examples show how the applets operate to provide a way for the classroom community to implicitly encounter the mathematical community through the authentic practices of mathematics (Rasmussen, Zandieh, King, & Teppo, 2005). The first example centers on students beginning experience with a tangent vector field applet. The second example develops as the students learn more about solutions to differential equations and leads to a statement of the uniqueness theorem. In the third example, students use a specially designed applet that creates a numerical approximation and its associated image in 3-space relating to a non-technological visualization task that introduces solutions to systems of differential equations.

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