Experimental Design: Utilizing Microsoft Mathematics in Teaching and Learning Calculus

The experimental design was conducted to investigate the use of Microsoft Mathematics, free software made by Microsoft Corporation, in teaching and learning Calculus. This paper reports results from experimental study details on implementation of Microsoft Mathematics in Calculus, students’ achievement and the effects of the use of Microsoft Mathematics on students’ attitudes in relation to such experience. Two classes of the students from the first year student in Universitas Serang Raya were participated in the study. Control group was taught by using conventional teaching method, whereas experimental group was taught by using Microsoft Mathematics software. Assessment of students’ achievement was collected previous to and after experiment by giving the test. At the end of the lecture, both groups completed the questionnaires indicating their attitudes toward and self-confidence in mathematics and computers. In addition, the experimental group was asked to complete a questionnaire about their attitudes toward using Microsoft Mathematics. Interview process was added to complete the data. This study found that students who taught by using Microsoft Mathematics had higher achievement and has a positive effect on students’ confidence of mathematics.

Microsoft Mathematics program is free software made by Microsoft Corporation that has a symbolic computing system and work based on mathematical expressions. Microsoft Mathematics as mathematics computing software is appropriate to utilize in assist students to solve the problem of Linear Algebra, Statistics, Calculus, and Trigonometry.

LITERATURE REVIEW
One of the main goals in mathematics education is to ensure the success of all students in understanding mathematics. Mathematics is regarded as one of the subjects in the most challenging and problematic aspects of education. However at the same time, mathematics is the most important study in science, considering mathematics as knowledge that is widely used in daily life and applied to many others fields of science. Mathematics is a basic tool in analyzing the concepts of each field in the aspect of human life [8]. For this reason teachers should focus on the development of students' understanding of mathematical concepts and need to provide a quality educational environment. Many students judge complicated to engage with mathematical concepts. Duval (in  states that, "there is no understanding of mathematics without visualization [9]". The visualization is intended to be a concrete tool that facilitates students to explore mathematical concepts. Technology is useful to support students in understanding concepts, reasoning, building and exploring knowledge, solving problems and generating new information. Furthermore, it helps students to better visualize the mathematical concepts. The previous researches have revealed that the activities supported by visualization can improve the learning mathematics [10]. Ashburn and Floden (2006) emphasized the importance of using technology in mathematics learning is to build a graphical representation and symbolic expression of mathematics to assist students in creating the goal of understanding [11]. The approach of technology involves the actions, perceptions, and learning products based on doing, teaching, and seeing [12]. By using multimedia instructions students can communicate information, involve more than one model of presentation, and reminding how a material can be presented. Multimedia instruction is a method for students to represent an abstract object of mathematics. Research showed that using the tools of representation in teaching and learning can support the development of students' mathematics understanding [13]. Being able to connect the different mathematical representations or generate new representations of the same object has proven to be a strong indicator in an effort to increase students' knowledge and understanding.
There are many researchers who concluded that interactive technology especially as visualization tools are an effective media to engage students in the learning and create meaningful learning [14]. It creates interactive visualization is an important aspect in learning process. Connecting different visualization provides different benefits in cognitive development as well. Technology used for the education purposes should be complemented with dynamic animation and flexible so that students can build an understanding in the better way. Hogstad and Brekke (2010) states, "students need to see things moving to understand and to process information [15]".
Calculus is part of the mathematics. Calculus plays an important in the curriculum in almost all disciplines, such as engineering, science, business, economics, computer science, and information system. Calculus concepts are arranged in a systematic, logical, and hierarchical from the simplest to the most complex. In other words, understanding and mastery of a concept is a requirement to recognize the further concept. Therefore naturally the mastery of Calculus is essential in learning. However, many students make the Calculus as a trouble in the learning process. Calculus as part of the mathematics has an abstract object that most students are not able to imagine the object.
Microsoft Mathematics is free software made by Microsoft Corporation. This software provides users to perform computational mathematics. Writing, calculating, and manipulating of mathematical expressions and graphical visualization of 2D, 3D and animation can be carried out with simple instructions. Solving problems using Microsoft Mathematics featured step solution of a problem as that obtained when done manually. For example, the function = 2 − 3 + 4 will be investigated the first derivative of f(x) and its graph in 2D and 3D.

METHODOLOGY
The main aim of this study was conducted to answer the following research questions: a. What is the role of Microsoft Mathematics in the teaching, learning, and understanding of Calculus? b. What are the effects of the use of Microsoft Mathematics on students' attitudes towards mathematics in the classroom? The first aim of this study is to find out descriptive information the use of Microsoft Mathematics by students to build their knowledge and construct their understanding related to mathematical content. This data was obtained from the pre-test and post-test of mathematical test both experimental group and control group. Then the data was analyzed quantitatively comparing the group that had experimental teaching using Microsoft Mathematics with the one that had conventional teaching. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of data collected by earnings of questionnaire about students attitudes toward using Microsoft Mathematics to answer the second research question.
A mixed method research design that integrated both quantitative and qualitative research methods has been used in this study. The quantitative approach assisted to evaluate students' understanding and learning of Calculus concepts using Microsoft Mathematics according to the scores earned. The subjects that participated in this study were 22 students. The students were divided randomly in two groups: control and experimental group. The experimental group was students who taught by using Microsoft Mathematics and the control group was students who taught by conventional teaching. At the end of the lecture the experimental group completed a questionnaire about their attitudes toward using Microsoft Mathematics. The questionnaire was used in experiment study was taken from an article written by Fogarty, Cretchley, Harman, Ellerton and Konki (2001) [16]. In the article clarified that the questionnaire is validated and used to measure attitudes toward using technology in learning mathematics.

FINDING AND DISCUSSION
As the experimental work according to the use of Microsoft Mathematics in learning mathematics started by illustrating a review of activities developed to indicate how Microsoft Mathematics has been used in learning Calculus. The results of the mathematical tests, comparing the performance for each student in the pre and the post test between the experimental and the control group were shown.

Experimental teaching using Microsoft Mathematics
This study worked the design experiment methodology that engages in stating the aims, planning to accomplish the aims, collecting and analyzing data (MacDonald, 2008) [17]. This study organized the activities for the use Microsoft Mathematics during the lecture based on three main purposes of using a tool in teaching and learning process (Wilson, 2008) [18]. These activities are shown in the following Accessibility of Microsoft Mathematics recommends students not only in discovering the concepts of Calculus, but also in communicating the concepts mathematically. By using Microsoft Mathematics students were able to present their solutions and provide feedback to the teacher during the lecture.

Pre and post test result
In the following tables show the results of the pre and post test and the mean of the result both experimental group and control group. In the experimental group can note that the average of the difference between pre test and post test is 5.14 that are significantly higher than in the control group, which is 0.82. This shows that the students in the experimental group advanced more in the post test than students in the control group. There are two students in the experimental group and four students in the control group which had lower performance in the post test. In Table4  According to Table5 above, there are no significant differences from two groups in pre test results. It means that the level of students in two groups generally is the equal. This information is important for the analysis of post test results, as compared the control group that had conventional teaching with the experimental group that participated in experimental teaching using Microsoft Mathematics. The knowledge level of students in both groups based on the mathematical content can be defined as a good level as their average scores are 72-74 (the maximum of scores was 100).
Figure4 shows the graphical representation regarding to the frequency of scores gained by the students for each group.
Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online) Vol. 6, No.25, 2015 Figure4. Graphical representation of pre test in both groups From the Figure4 noted that the frequency of scores for both groups is approximately the same, particularly in the interval of scores 70-85. The other intervals are compensated, for illustration in the intervals 50-59 there are no students from the experimental group, but in the interval > 85, there are many students from the experimental group.
Next here below is presented the descriptive statistics of the post test scores of two groups (Table6 and Table7).
Table6. Normality of the data post test In Table7 noted that the higher mean is earned by the experimental group with a difference is 6.09. This illustrates a significant result for the study that the experimental group had better performance than the control group in the post test. Here below shows the graphical representation of the post test result based on frequency of scores gained by the students in both experimental and control group. The data clearly specify that the performance of students in the experimental group was better than in the control group.

Students' attitudes toward using Microsoft Mathematics
Cronbach's Alpha reliability pre and post both groups, as shown in Table8, are high and accordingly describe that the mathematics attitude investigation could be accepted as a reliable instrument for the purpose of the study.
Table8 Both control and experimental group have given the questionnaire 1 and 2. The questionnaire 1 is about mathematics confidence attitudes and the questionnaire 2 is about computer confidence attitudes. Here below are the following details of the results.

Figure6. Categories of attitudes both groups on the responses from the mathematics confidence questionnaire
According to the Figure6 mostly students in the control group had "very good" attitudes related to mathematics confident and generally students in the experimental group had "excellent" attitudes.
Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online) Vol. 6, No.25, 2015 Figure7. Categories of attitudes both groups on the responses from the computer confidence questionnaire Associating with computer confident, from the Figure7 can be noticed that commonly students in the control group had "very good" attitudes and in the main students of the experimental group had "excellent" attitudes.

CONCLUSION
The main aim of the research is to investigate the roles of Microsoft Mathematics in teaching and learning Calculus. Here below presented the answers of the research question, according to the results of the research. a. What is the role of Microsoft Mathematics in the teaching, learning, and understanding of Calculus?
From this study along with previous researches on the use of computer for education goals demonstrated that applying program computer, in this study is Microsoft Mathematics, in classroom is important to improve students' learning. Interactive visualization which is a branch of graphic visualization in computer science is essential components offered by Microsoft Mathematics. It facilitates students to better understand in mathematical content and involve studying how students interact with computer to improve representation that is not obtained with conventional teaching. As shown by the students' achievement in the experimental group in the post test compared to the students' achievement in the control group. The qualitative analysis of this study is according to on the model below  [19].
Figure8. Qualitative analysis model by  b. What are the effects of the use of Microsoft Mathematics on students' attitudes towards mathematics in the classroom? Generally this study informs the positive attitudes toward the use of Microsoft Mathematics. It assists students to gain the better understanding, enrich students' mathematics learning, and increase students' motivation to get more involved in learning activities. As illustrated by students' response through completing the questionnaires.