This topic was not covered in any great depth during the course. The curriculum is likely to place more emphasis on this topic in the future. The findings suggest that students are accustomed to seeing graphs that have a positive rather than a negative slope. As a consequence, their rate of correct answers is much higher if a positive slope is involved than if a negative slope is involved, regardless of the topic. Class content clearly impacts the results on both opinion and learning questions.
Some concepts seem to come easier than others.
Potentially biasing factors such as a guest lecturer may affect the results. Next Step It appears that men and women demonstrate different strengths and weaknesses in this particular class at both the beginning and end of the semester. Further research will likely be conducted to better identify those topics where this is the case and the reasons for such discrepancies, again with the aim of improving student learning.