Students' Use of Derive Software in Comprehending and Making Sense of Denite Integral and Area Concepts

The study documents representations, resources and strategies that rst-year engineering students demonstrate as a result of using Derive software to comprehend and solve problems that involve the concept of de- nite integral. Three student proles appear to emerge from analysis of their problem-solving approaches: (a) students who relied on the use of the soft- ware as a means to validate their paper and pencil work, (b) those who used the software to represent graphically and calculate approximated areas and (c) a group of students who combined both paper and pencil and software ap- proaches to solve problems but often did not connect concepts that appeared in the study of the denite integral with basic ideas (and procedures) previously studied (e.g., area of simple gures). There is evidence that the use of Derive software helped students elicit ideas that needed to be discussed in order to rene their initial approaches to problems.