Teaching and learning mathematical functions and graphs pose significant challenges for teachers and students. Students often have difficulty in understanding a functional relationship between two quantities such as distance and time, temperature and precipitation, and gas price and number of gallons. Teaching students to have quantitative thinking about functions can help them understand the rate of change for complicated functions and later succeed in learning Calculus. Traditional educational methods such as static graph images and some learning tools usually have some limitations. Teaching students the dynamic changes of quantities within the static picture has serious difficulties. Compared to the learning tools, the game-based learning increases interest when students are learning complicated functions. This thesis presents a game-based learning application called Functions Fun, which runs on iPad tablet computers. The game is created to teach / learn the following functions: Linear, Quadratic, Exponential, Logarithmic, Trigonometric, and Polynomial with degrees over four. Each function is covered under a game level. The game setting is a jungle environment. Each game level has its own scene, challenging the player to take an action while teaching a function and its graphical representation. Functions Fun enables students to play and learn functions and graphs in a more effective and entertaining manner. / Master of Science / Teaching functions and graphs plays an important role in mathematics education. Teachers and researchers emphasize the need for students to form the quantitative thinking habits when they are learning different function graphs. This thesis presents Functions Fun, an iPad educational game that aims to help secondary students to understand function graphs by varying two quantities x and y such as distance and time, temperature and precipitation, and gas price and number of gallons. Adventure game is chosen as the game genre and six real-life models related to the following six functions are created: Linear, Quadratic, Exponential, Logarithmic, Trigonometric, and Polynomial with degrees over four. Each function is covered under a game level. The game setting is a jungle environment. Players are rewarded for their accomplishments. Through game effects and animations, students can have a better understanding of how the value changes of variables x and y influence the shape of graphs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/90289 |
| Date | 18 June 2019 |
| Creators | Liu, Xuan |
| Contributors | Computer Science, Balci, Osman, Norton, Anderson H. III, Tilevich, Eli |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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