Electronic Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate MathematicsSan Francisco, California, November 4-7, 1999Paper P001Collaborative Projects in Calculus I |
John D. BaildonPenn State Worthington Scranton Dunmore, PA 18512 USA jdb8@psu.edu |
| Click to access this paper: |
ABSTRACT
Students often benefit from testing their understanding of calculus concepts with their classmates. This heightens interest and appreciation for the subject matter, especially among those who have had prior exposure to it in high school. In this paper short in-class projects will be shown that are designed for this purpose. Among those included will be lessons involving the relationship of functions to their derivatives, rates of change, and Riemann sums. A computer lab project using DERIVE also will allow the students to investigate numerically and graphically the effects of increasing the number of intervals in Riemann sums and of picking the test points in various ways, including randomly.Keyword(s): calculus, cooperative learning, Derive