Collaborative task design with student partners in a STEM foundation mathematics course: visual support for the multiplication of matrices

This paper concerns part of a collaborative project involving ex-students from a university Foundation Studies Programme working with teacher-researchers and analytic assistants in designing computer-based tasks for Foundation level tutorial sessions. This paper focuses on the design and use of a GeoGebra file to assist with students becoming proficient with matrix multiplication. The visual support of highlighting particular rows and columns of two matrices which are to be multiplied together proved helpful for students to develop success with carrying out matrix multiplication but also had a negative effect as well. A particular issue arose concerning the lack of variation in the size of matrices within the first set of questions. This led to difficulties with later questions involving matrices of different sizes.