Eliciting students’ thinking about change: filling a vase in a computer application

Computer applications and digital tasks can be designed in ways that support mathematical learning. In this paper we discuss the results of a teacher experiment involving a computer application that was designed to elicit students’ covariational thinking when learning about graphs. The application provides adaptive feedback based on students’ graphs, that are created using free-hand drawing. We focus on students’ learning with two animations of the application. Analysis of students’ graphs and written explanations showed that most students improved their initial graph or they kept the same graph as it was originally correct after working with the application. These results and its implications will be discussed.