Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1985

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Abstract

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of three instructional methods for improving students' estimates of average speed. The student's task was to estimate the average speed of a round trip when given the initial and return speeds. The discovery procedure simulated the round trip by showing one point that moved at the two simulated speeds and a second reference point that simulated the student's estimate. The graph method showed how increasing the initial speed influenced the average speed when the return speed was held constant. The computation procedure presented the students with some problems in which they were shown how to compute the average speed by dividing total distance by total time. The results revealed that the discovery method was fairly successful but the graph method was less successful than anticipated and the computation method was a failure. The effectiveness of the discovery method was attributed to the concreteness of the examples and the interactive feedback provided by the reference point.

Extent

68 p.

Comments

FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1985.|Charles E. Schmidt College of Science|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Identifier

FADT14253

Format

pdf

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