Co-Integrate Mathematics Series: Deploying Computer-Based Lab Activities in Mainstream Calculus II

The course MTH133 is the second semester in our main calculus sequence, and focuses on integral calculus, sequences and series, and the calculus of planar curves. The majority of enrolled students (~2000 per year) have declared interest in engineering and are in their first three semesters at MSU; the remainder are primarily students from the College of Natural Sciences.

Over the past four years, we developed and piloted the lab activities, with an eye toward deploying them at scale. This year, the labs are in use across all MTH133 sections.

We will begin our presentation with a detailed demonstration of one of the labs, mainly to showcase the student experience. We will follow this up with a discussion of our philosophy toward the “place” the labs occupy in calculus instruction, specifically in relation to the extant curriculum. We will also describe ongoing research aimed at understanding students’ learning experiences with the labs, as well as some of our findings.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Andrew Krause coordinates teaching professional development for ULAs, GTAs, post-docs and new faculty in the Department of Mathematics. He also teaches a variety of large-lecture introductory courses, usually Calculus I, and strives to incorporate research-based teaching practices in these challenging teaching contexts. Krause enjoys playing softball and baseball, cooking and gardening.

Willie Wong is in his fifth year as an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics. According to his Form D, his day job should be the geometric analysis of hyperbolic partial differential equations. When not putting out Calculus II-related fires, he relaxes by blowing up naive conjectures on MathOverflow.