Evaluating the incorporation of technology and application projects in the higher education mathematics classroom

摘要

We report the qualitative and quantitative results of incorporating interdisciplinary application projects and increasing the use of teaching with technology into Calculus I, II and III at the University of Colorado Denver. Minimal changes were made to the curriculum and minimal time was required of instructors to make the changes. Instructors were given one 3-hour introduction to teaching with technology, a 3-hour introduction to one or two interdisciplinary problems to be used in the class, and course instructors met with each other no more than 1 hour per week. To evaluate the effectiveness of these modifications, 24 students were interviewed four times during a 2 year time span, student comments from student evaluations regarding the application projects were recorded, and the grade-point averages (GPAs) of four groups of 40 students for the year following their completion of Calculus III were analysed. The results show that students' enthusiasm and interest in interdisciplinary application projects were greater when the projects were enthusiastically endorsed by the instructor, but even with mixed instructor enthusiasm, incorporating application projects and increasing the use of technology in the classroom increase the well-roundedness of students' education and increase their performance in more advanced courses as measured by their overall GPA for the year following their Calculus III math class.