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The data sources used in this study are as follows:
1. Initial Survey
This was a one-page survey given to all present students at the
beginning of the study, several days before the first opener. It
asked students about their preferred type of graphing calculator,
whether or not they had them at home, how often they used them,
how reliant they were on them, and how skilled they were with them.
2. Opener Problems
Over the course of the next few weeks, I gave the students six
opener problems, each at the beginning of a class period, designed
to test their ability to decide whether or not a calculator would
be useful in a variety of mathematical situations. Each opener was
presented in the form of a half-page worksheet including both the
problem itself and a mini-survey asking the student whether or not
he or she used the calculator, whether it was useful, and how
accurate he or she perceived the answer to be.
3. Post-Quiz
A week after the last of the openers, I administered a post-quiz
to determine if the students' abilities had improved due to my
mini-lectures. The quiz had six problems, each of which was similar
(but not identical) to one of the openers. Instead of a full survey,
each quiz problem was merely followed by the single question
"How useful was the calculator on this problem?"
with the added option "did not use it."