The effects of metacognition and email interactions on learning graphing

The purpose of this study was twofold: First, to investigate the effects of metacognition and email interaction between teacher-student on learning to interpret and construct graphs. Second, to describe the email interaction on three levels of interaction: tutorial, metacognitive and life. Participants were 50 ninth-grade students (boys and girls) who studied graphs in two classes. One class (n = 25) was exposed to EXCEL software embedded within email interaction (EMAIL) and the other class (n = 25) was exposed to EXCEL software embedded within email interaction and metacognitive instruction (EMAIL + META). Results indicated that the EMAIL + META students significantly outperformed the EMAIL students on graph interpretation and graph construction. In particular the effects were observed on students' ability to explain mathematical reasoning and on reducing misconceptions regarding graphs. Furthermore, qualitative analysis of the EMAIL messages indicated that the EMAIL META students frequently used different levels of interaction in their email interactions than the EMAIL students.