Computer-Assisted Interactive Calculus at Virginia Wesleyan College

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Thomas R. Fanney DUE 9550934 Virginia Wesleyan College FY1995 $ 28,083 Norfolk, VA 23502 ILI - Instrumentation Project: Mathematics Title: Computer-Assisted Interactive Calculus at Virginia Wesleyan College The Virginia Wesleyan College Department of Mathematics and Computer Science is presently incorporating some of the many innovative ideas stemming from the calculus reform movement into its own curriculum, and is shifting from more traditional teaching methods to those involving more experimentation and discovery in the classroom. The Department, which consists of six full-time teaching faculty and several adjuncts, serves a sizable fraction of the general student body through small sections of its introductory courses, as well as a modest but talented group of majors in mathematics and computer science. In recent years the department has kept abreast of reform efforts advocating experiences that make mathematics more relevant and interesting to the students, and has begun to adopt these ideas in its classrooms, in part through the use of graphing calculators and computer software. It is now preparing to take another step by offering, at the precalculus and calculus level, laboratory courses styled after those in the natural sciences. The department is asking for aid in funding the creation of a laboratory classroom to be used for hands-on, computer-enhanced instruction of mathematics, physics, and computer science courses. This room would be equipped with a network of 13 Pentium microcomputer workstations, a central file server, a color projector, and MAPLE and MATHCAD, the principle software instructional tools. The room would initially serve as the meeting place for all calculus sections and selected precalculus sections. The facility wou ld also be available to instructors of other math and scienae courses and would ultimately be used in teaching most upper-level mathematics courses as well. VWC also has tutoring and mentoring outreach programs with area K-12 schools that could benefit from the availability of such a computer classroom. The college's enrichment programs for these at-risk students would be significantly enhanced in such a technologically-advanced teaching environment. Members of the math/cs department have also expressed interest in future summer math workshops that introduce contemporary teaching technologies to area public school teachers.