History of Calculus&Mathematica
Calculus&Mathematica grew from a frustration that students and faculty felt because a majority of students had poor performance in traditional Calculus classes. A new software package, Mathematica, was just released, giving the ability to perform mathematical functions and to draw 2D and 3D graphs by entering simple commands into the
computer. About this time (1988), math professors Bill Davis (OSU), Horacio Porta (UIUC), and Jerry Uhl (UIUC) were looking for a new and
effective way to teach calculus. After meeting with Stephen Wolfram,
the principal author of Mathematica, they decided that a
course taught with interactive computer based texts was the answer
they were looking for. After a year, the first pilot course was
offered. Initially, they taught the course in the traditional
lecture-discussion format, asking the students to keep them informed
about their thoughts on the class. The students seemed to like it, but
something was missing.
After a short time, several students decided the problem was with
the lectures. It took up too much of their time, not giving them the
opportunity to work on the lessons at a comfortable pace.The courses work without lectures because lessons are learned from the electronic text. The
instructors are available to answer questions when needed, but
not to lecture. From that moment on, there were no more traditional style lectures in
the C&M classrooms.
A few years later, a couple of Illinois high school mathematics teachers
asked "If you can teach without lectures, why do the students have to
be on campus?" They pointed out that each year they had two or three
students ready for calculus, but they couldn't offer it to them
because it was too costly to devote a teacher to a few students at
their small school. This led the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana to establish
their distance education program for Calculus, NetMath, offering Calculus&Mathematica to high school students over the Internet. In 1994,
Ohio State followed suit with Calculus Remote from The Ohio State University
(CROSU).
Today, Calculus&Mathematica is running at several
universities nationwide, including OSU, UIUC, and Missouri University. In addition, Calculus&Mathematica Remote is
offered at OSU, UIUC, University of Pittsburgh, Suffolk, University of Massachusetts, University of Wisconsin Parkside and Sauk Valley.
In the future, Calculus&Mathematica will continue to evolve,
helping people to see that there is a better way to teach mathematics. Already, Calculus&Mathematica has shown that there
are serious problems in the current methods of teaching. Calculus
Reform at Ohio State and other universities are moving to classes
based on the pedagogy and teaching methods used in C&M. For more
information, check out the links below.
Teaching Vs. Doing-an
explanation of the problems faced in current classrooms
Changes in the Math Department at Ohio State-a technical paper discussing
the Calculus Reform here at Ohio State
