Effectiveness of GSP-Aided Instruction

The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the Geometer's Sketchpad (GSP) in teaching the area of triangles to elementary students. The authors adopted a pretest-posttest research design with 2 equivalent groups. The subjects of the experiment comprised fifth-grade students from an elementary school in Pingtung County, divided into an experimental group of 26 students and a control group of 25 students. Both groups attended six 40-min lessons over a month, with the experimental group receiving GSP-aided instruction and the control group receiving traditional lecture instruction. The authors revised the test instrument based on , and the instrument was further reviewed and revised by experts. They conducted a third revision of the contents after performing a pilot test. The difficulty index of the test ranged between 0.18 and 1, and the discrimination index ranged between 0.13 and 0.88. The split-half reliability of the test was 0.8723. The results revealed the following: (a) in learning the area of triangles, the experimental group performed significantly better than the control group; (b) the results of the formative assessments indicated a superior performance in the experimental group compared with the control group in all of the lessons, with the exception of the second lesson; and (c) the male and female students in the experimental group and the control group exhibited no significant differences. Based on these results, the authors suggest that students be offered the opportunity to use concrete teaching aids or computer simulations when learning the area of triangles.