Mathematics in a ubiquitous computing environment: Communication, roles, and sense making.

Abstract

In conclusion, e-mail served as a conversational and instructional tool for a college mathematics class. E-mails provided the students a conversational tool in which they were able to converse with the professor about problems in or out of class, check about homework assignments, or just talk. As an instructional tool, e-mails allowed the professor to discuss students' conceptual problems. E-mail also provided the professor with an administrative tool in which changes in class times, assignments, or other organizational needs could be sent. E-journals provided an avenue for students to write as they reflected upon conceptual understanding and participated in the discourse community of the class, bridging the discourse community of mathematics. Additionally, the study supports the assertion that students' writing provides a starting place for change as teachers reflect upon how their students learn and think about mathematics.

The study found e-mail and e-journals provided opportunities to give individualized feedback to students and to extend the classroom conversation, but also enabled interactions that were not occurring in the classroom. This extension of the classroom dialogue provided new opportunities for students to think through issues that would not have been addressed in the classroom. E-mail and e-journals permitted a diverse set of conceptual topics to be discussed in depth. While e-journals may have promoted student learning through student reflections, the e-journals provided the professor with important insights in the complexity of students' meaning making processes.

This study examined how students used technology in a ubiquitous computer environment to communicate with their college mathematics professor and to each other, to understand how the role of the professor and relationships between the students and the professor changed as the technology was integrated, and how student participation with the electronic communications contributed to their sense making of mathematics. By providing descriptive detail of the students' reflective responses to e-journal prompts, I hoped to provide information that might assist other teachers as they struggle to enhance communication and understand student conceptual sense making while offering insights into a more dynamic curriculum with communications, meaning, and inquiry more centrally located.