Abstract
This article reports on the effectiveness of GeoGebra as a modelling tool to mitigate
undergraduate engineering mathematics students’ misconceptions and errors associated
with complex numbers. GeoGebra is a transformative open-source mathematical software
that allows students to visualise and manipulate mathematical objects on different types of
digital devices. Despite the centrality of complex numbers in studying vital mathematical
concepts such as vectors, eigenvalues, and eigenvectors, studies revealed a prevalence of
misconceptions and errors associated with complex numbers. Some students confuse the
complex number’s representations; others view the representations as autonomous and
unrelated. The study adopted a methodological pragmatism research design. It involved
volunteering first-year first-semester engineering mathematics students from purposefully
selected specialisation groups that included mechanical, industrial, and electrical
engineering, at a South African university. The empirical intervention was underpinned by
the Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) framework; the data for students’ misconceptions
and errors were collected from their pre-test and post-test scripts and analysed qualitatively
using Donaldson and Orton’s errors categories as a lens and quantised or quantitised using
a chi-square test. The total frequencies of misconceptions and errors yielded a chi-square
statistic of 7.9584 and a p-value of 0.004787, which was statistically significant at p < 0.05.
Contribution: The study’s key findings strongly suggest that GeoGebra-facilitated intervention
effectively mitigates undergraduate engineering mathematics students’ total misconceptions
and errors associated with complex numbers more than the traditional intervention. This
indicates teachers can harness GeoGebra, reducing students’ misconceptions and errors
associated with complex numbers and improving the quality of teaching and learning complex
numbers and tertiary engineering mathematics education.